


The Thirteen Armies

by coley_merrin



Category: Super Junior-M
Genre: Background Character Death, Illnesses, Injury, M/M, Pseudo-History, Time Travel, Torture, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:30:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7941427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coley_merrin/pseuds/coley_merrin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A single vacation takes Kyuhyun further than he could have ever known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> *Not intended in the very slightest to be true to any form of history. Just so no one goes out to try and find out what really happened.*

***

For Kyuhyun, it was relaxing to travel alone. There were no opinions to wrangle, no one to bargain with. With one or two friends was okay, with a group it was continuous juggling. Kyuhyun picked the destination, the dates. He chose when his flight was, how much luggage he was taking, and he left. That was all. The only biggest hurdle was getting time off from work, but he’d had that arranged in advance. Stepping out of his hotel was the biggest pleasure, because the hard part was done. The traveling, the checking in, all of that was accomplished and all he had to do was enjoy. He had a restaurant on his list that he wanted to eat at that night, and a walking map so that he knock out a few of the closer items on his list for the afternoon.

The first was a place he had been to as a child with his parents. A shrine. He remembered the tightness of his father’s hand, the noise of the intersection. He’d been young, four or five, as his father had told him a watered down version of the tale. Once, there had been a battle of thirteen armies. It had lasted years, half a dozen at least, and some had fought and won, and others had lost. When the last army had been defeated, many men were dead, and the shrine had been built in their memory.

“Razed, and burned several times over the centuries, the shrine has always been rebuilt on the same foundation, to honor those lives lost for the safety of the people,” Kyuhyun read from the walking guide.

Of course, what might have been a rather lovely building in its time was instead a squat, square little stone building. Instead of standing with some ceremony, it was squeezed between everything else in the city, and lit occasionally by a blinking “Walk” sign. It stood out because of how much smaller it was than all the buildings around it, how plain and old it was with its little historical marker. It sat on a brick foundation, with the original brick still on the inside, protected by clear plastic. They were rough and eroded-looking next to the pristine concrete floor. Eventually they would give way, too. Kyuhyun actually felt sad for them, for how long they’d worked to keep the shrine standing.

It was empty, when he entered it. There was room for two, maybe three people inside, and there were informational graphics on the walls about the battles, the history of the place. It was hard to imagine that under their feet were the remnants of armies lost, life going on above without hardly noticing what had happened years before.

Above the altar, there was the text of a poem in several languages, from one of the few records of the battles written down that had survived the centuries.

“The ground is red,  
The sky is red,  
The men are weeping,  
The sky will weep with us soon.”

It sent an uncomfortable tingle over his scalp to read it, words he’d read a dozen times or more in the collected works of the poet, a solider who had been there during the fighting.

“The record of a soldier,” Kyuhyun murmured, and his fingertip dipped into the first character of the poet’s name where it had been smoothed deep into the wood, and then the second.

Zhou. Mi.

Kyuhyun blinked at the light that glowed there deep in the grooves, looking back at the ugly plastic shielding that kept the weather out of the shrine to see if a light had shown in from outside. But no, the character was still illuminated, bleeding from line to curve, as though painted with a brush to the last stroke of the carved name.

Kyuhyun gasped, snatching back his finger as heat snapped against it, like the light he saw was hot. It had to be an illusion, a trick of light. He actually looked up, tried to find a hole in the ceiling.

A trick for tourists. It had to be.

Kyuhyun recoiled at a gust of wind, choked at the dust he half inhaled. He reached for the altar to steady himself, the wall, his ears as hollow as a drum as he heard every breath. His hands plunged into dry grass, his knees stinging as he landed hard. An earthquake. No. He swallowed back the queasy feeling, his finger burned, head spinning, and he gasped, opening his eyes to a mass of men dimly lit around him. Someone leaped over him, kicking him as they ran, and he fell over, grunting, his elbows, ribs aching. Static in his ears was replaced by the sounds of shouting. Metal on metal. People were running. Fighting. A battle. A battle?

Kyuhyun rolled again, bringing his hands up to protect himself as a man fell over his legs, and a sound left him seeing the blankness on the man’s face. Like he was—

The shrine was gone. The city was gone! He crawled without looking back, swords clanging. He wanted to scramble forward, away, but he froze, air backing in his lungs as the ground under him trembled and not a foot away a horse thundered by, hooves striking hard, throwing dirt back in its path. That was when he escaped, on his knees, stumbling to his feet and staying low. He tried to push at a hand that grabbed his coat, coming up short and off balance.

“No!” he shouted, raising his hands again against the club that threatened. But Kyuhyun fell to his knees again as the hand holding him released. Kyuhyun looked up, and saw why, saw the sword piercing the man’s throat. Kyuhyun panted, eyes on the withdrawing bloody sword as the man fell. The man with the sword said something short and rapid to him, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to his feet and away. He was shoved at the base of a tree, and more was said, an order he took to mean to stay there.

His savior raced back toward the fighting, the red cloth at his hips like a flag as he directed men, killing another as Kyuhyun winced and tried to look away. It left Kyuhyun to shake, to gather in on himself as his skin slicked cool and damp. He searched for a weapon and found only sticks, but those would not protect him as he watched men fall, green armor, brown, riveted and dark. He gasped, flinching as limbs were struck, rent away, men on both sides falling. He’d lost sight of the man who’d helped him, and Kyuhyun’s clutched the bark of the tree, watching for someone to appear attacking him, curling into a tighter ball as another horse thundered nearby. It was a fucking battle, not some kind of play acting. Maybe he’d hit his head in the shrine. Maybe that was it. It was a dream. Maybe. 

It was a shake in the small of his back as he pressed his face to the tree, and stared at his hand, at the smear, the droplets. He was dirty. He’d fallen. No. No, that was blood. The man who’d been attacking him. He scrubbed at blood with a leaf, winced at the tenderness of his finger where he’d burned it in the shrine. The leaf fell, shredded, dirty, and Kyuhyun looked up again. He didn’t want to watch, and yet he couldn’t look away as he tried to keep his heart from beating out of his chest.

Surely it was a dream. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Fighting slowed, whoever the opponents had been, falling away. He hadn’t just appeared on some movie set. His eyes closed hard for a moment as he saw again the man’s throat being pierced by a sword. He hadn’t heard the man die over the sound of fighting, but his brain filled it in for him. The gurgles. The glug of blood. Savage, and so quick. So quick, or Kyuhyun would have been concussed, or dead altogether. He blew out a breath, and looked around himself again. Trees. Light beyond it. He didn’t know who they were or why they fought, or what they would do to him. But to escape meant running. Running meant standing, and Kyuhyun used the tree, feeling weak as a newborn as he stood and hugged it. He felt cold. So cold. The shouts had slowed, and he watched men combing through the fallen, searching for those who lived.

There were few. He imagined once a man hit the earth, that was the end for most. It was— It wasn’t a game. Kyuhyun could see more beyond, the woods lightening even further. Day was breaking, he realized, but seeing more didn’t mean he wanted to. He licked his lips, recognizing his savior only by the red cloth dangling at his hip. He was alive, helping to lift a man injured onto some kind of litter.

When he looked to Kyuhyun, he fought not to cringe but failed, his legs tingling as he tried to step back, wanting to run as he was approached. Words were barked at him, and he shook his head. 

“I don’t know. I’m sorry! I don’t know what you’re saying. Please— Please don’t—!”

Don’t kill him. Kyuhyun was dragged, stumbling. If he hadn’t been so weak, maybe he would have fought, or tried to run, but the man still held his sword. It was still streaked with blood. He’d have been cut down in a second, he realized, his jaw chattering. There was a stench of blood, of urine, and worse as they passed bodies and the dying, and Kyuhyun fought the urge to gag. Men alive, sobbing. His eyes fell on a man whose arm was being bound, his hand— His hand was gone. Kyuhyun kept his eyes high, gasping for air, for sanity. He had played so many games. It had been so sterile, so detached. He was wheezing by the time he was stopped beside a horse, and they all but lifted him onto it. A different man swung onto the horse behind him, and he was taken away from the bodies, the dead, and scattered limbs. The horse’s coarse mane was all he could hold onto as they followed the limping, the soldiers streaming from the battlefield.

Kyuhyun winced at the light as they rode out into the open. The sun should have warmed him, but his heart stuttered in disbelief. His lips moved, playing the poem from the shrine again in his head as he sagged back against the man behind him and stared to the horizon. It wasn’t possible. The ground was red with blood. The men were weeping. The sun was rising, and the sky above it was brilliant, bloody red heralding the coming rain.

***

**The War**

***

There was no time to deal with strangers, not when there were men bleeding and in need of leadership. After a battle, there had to be order, preparation, something to keep them together or else they had dealt themselves a blow. Zhou Mi’s father had taught him that, before succumbing to wounds in battle himself. There were part of three camps returning, and one of his right hand men was overseeing the living, getting the injured to tents, organizing what to do with the dead. It had been—

There was no battle that ended well enough. The men had fought well, and repelled what could have been a break into their lines. A dawn raid, like a finger probing a wound. They’d snapped at the finger, and it told their opponents something as well. They would either try it again very soon to search for complacency, or wait for some time for the same reason. They would have to be prepared for both instances.

His only instruction for the stranger had been to take him to a fire, before Zhou Mi had returned to see to his men. It had been for a reason, because the boy had been pale and shaking though the morning had not been cold. No matter the times he’d turned over the stranger’s appearance in his head, he couldn’t place it. There had been a flash, like a candle appearing in a dark room, and then a boy falling to the earth. Zhou Mi nearly had a hole in himself to show for it, how he had gawked at the bright blue cloth and the boy flopped like a fish on a bank in the middle of their fight. When he made his way to his own side of camp, he saw his recollection was not incorrect. Zhou Mi had thought him a boy, but though he was young, he was grown. The man was dressed as no one he had seen before, not emperor or peasant. Slick-looking blue cloth, long tapered pants, a bag set beside him. Someone had found him a cup and the man drank hot soup from it from the smell.

The eyes that rose at his approach were wary, wide, catching at the cloth on his hip with some recognition. There was fear there, as though he expected Zhou Mi to draw the sword at his hip and run him through. For all he was a man, he was not a threat, not then. But Zhou Mi stayed standing, using his height as his advantage. He needed information. He had not been able to answer before, babbling nonsense.

“What is your name?” Zhou Mi started with. When that got him no answer, just incomprehensible sounds that sounded like no language he knew, and a shaking head, he tried more. “Where is your home? How did you get here? Do you have a horse?”

The denials grew more demonstrative, the man’s head shaking, cutting motions with his hands. He knew he was being asked questions, but either knew nothing, or doing a good job pretending.

“You are a stranger to us. Where did you come from?”

The man blinked at him, and something seemed to dawn over his face.

“You are… You are? I am! I am Kyuhyun. Uh. I— I am Kuixian.”

Such hope, looking to him like he expected to be understood. He did know something. Zhou Mi nodded at him.

“And? Where do you come from? How did you arrive on that battlefield?”

This man, this Kuixian, shook his head again, not understanding. Then his words were limited. From nowhere nearby, and not from one of the armies unless he played ignorant to find a place to spy from.

“I would turn you into the forest, but I can’t take that risk, so you will be in our care,” Zhou Mi said, not caring if he was understood or not. Maybe the tone of his voice would be understood. “Give me your bag.”

Zhou Mi gestured, and the bag was pulled in.

“No, give it to me,” Zhou Mi commanded.

If it wouldn’t be given, he would take it. Zhou Mi grabbed for it, getting part of the bag, part of Kuixian’s hand and it was not determination that had him yanking the bag back but the sharp spark of heat that snapped against his fingertips where their skin met. He had the bag, but he felt even more unsettled as Kuixian cradled his own hand like he had felt that same pain.

“Keep him separate from the others,” Zhou Mi said, eyeing their “guest.” In truth, their prisoner, at least as long as the war lasted. He could loose no spy. Rubbing his smarting fingers against his armor, he thought of the flash in the forest. He went one way with the bag, and Kuixian was taken away in another. There were words said after him, but not ones that Zhou Mi understood, nor anything that made him stop. He felt the first of the raindrops as he ducked into his tent. There was much to do, before the storm was on them fully, and he shed his outer leather armor, feeling lighter just from that. But the bag called for him, and he rummaged, curious as he waited for the signal he was needed.

Men in strange clothing, carrying strange items, no, they did not just appear. Zhou Mi rooted through the bag the man had been carrying, the strange slick cloth of it, and found little of note. A clear vessel of some kind containing what looked like water, several packets that crinkled and that when sliced open seemed to contain food of some type. A small, flat, rectangular box that looked as though it was made of obsidian. A fold of leather that enclosed stiff rectangles and colorful pieces of paper. A sleek book of words and paintings. There were no weapons, not hidden on the man’s body or otherwise according to those who had searched him. Strange clothes. Not a soldier, nor a peasant.

A man of some foreign land, or magic. Though his magic could not be so strong for all that he fallen into the middle of a battle. Unless he had been sent by the others. A saboteur.

They would see.

***

The rain was falling by the time that Kyuhyun was pushed into his prison. It was as half as tall as he was high, some kind of cloth tied over tightly lashed wood, forming a cell that was rooted firmly in the ground. He got a bowl of water, like a dog, a pot to piss in, and a smelly blanket. The entrance was closed, the cloth lowered over it. He could hear outside conversations, and the sound of rain striking the cloth. It didn’t drip inside, small favors. But it was so close, it felt hard to breathe. It didn’t matter how much the blanket stank, he wrapped himself in it, huddling on the hard ground trying to make sense of things. He was a bird in a cage, alone, in a place where all he knew was how to say his own name. And he thought, thank you and I love you, the latter of which he didn’t think was going to help him.

The shelter, the soup, it had helped him feel like he wasn’t going to just claw his way out of his skin or fall unconscious. He was grateful for that, and that he hadn’t just been staked out in the rain somewhere to molder. The leader, the man with the red sash, he’d seen to that. People didn’t just lock up people who they thought were friendly. It meant that they thought he was a threat. Considering he’d fallen into the middle of a fight, he didn’t know what he’d have thought himself. He’d had no weapons, so at least they had no reason to fear him for that. And unless he could strangle someone with a blanket, that hadn’t changed.

It took hours to unwind enough to truly doze, jerking awake every so often at the sound of approaching steps, of words he couldn’t understand. No one ever stopped, and Kyuhyun stared blearily at the rivulet of water than ran across the bottom of a corner of his shelter. No. His cell. It continued through the night, the rain, jolting, cold and afraid as men walked with torches, patrolling. He was glanced in on, once, but he pretended to be asleep, curling up tight under his blanket to try and get warm.

Food was tossed in on his blanket sometime after the sun rose, some kind of cold roasted vegetables wrapped in what seemed like lettuce. His lack of sleep, the fear, it made him feel almost sick to think of eating, but he forced himself to. One bite, he bargained with himself. One more bite. He made it through half of it, the lettuce stringy and tough as he chewed, almost choking him. But still, he kept what was left close, as though they could take it from him. Even just that, and a few sips from his water bowl exhausted him, his eyelids drooping as his ears strained for the sound of men talking. Sleep fell on him violently, but his waking, his startling, was gentler. They brought him more soup toward noon, and filled his water bowl as he wrapped himself in his blanket and watched them like a wary cat in a cage.

The soup, that he ate and quickly, gulping it, reveling in the warmth of it until he had to force himself to slow. He gnawed meat off of the bone, not caring what animal it had originated from. He was not overly full, but he was warm, and not sick, and not shaking.

He slipped into shallow sleep, breathing in the scent of rain, and exhaling imagining fire, and warmth.

***

Zhou Mi sighed, his eyes heavy as he lifted his head from the low table. The sun after the storm had brightened the tent considerably and he peered to see he was not alone.

The prisoner.

Zhou Mi inhaled, fingers gripped on the hilt of his sword. But he did not draw it, watching the man peer at the walls, at Zhou Mi’s desk, with curiosity.

“It doesn’t seem like such a fancy tent,” Kuixian said, touching the fabric and one of the maps he had hung there. “I thought only rich men were officers, and you seemed to be leading. I thought it was going to be some kind of palace.”

Zhou Mi tensed as Kuixian stepped forward, but all he did was press his fingertips to the table. It rocked a little on the uneven stones that it rested on.

“I wish I could read the maps,” Kuixian said, kneeling down and peering at the various scrolls on the desk. “If this really is the period of the Battles, this stuff would be worth a fortu—“

Zhou Mi’s free hand shot out, trapping Kuixian’s hand before he could touch one of the folded papers.

“How did you get in here?” Zhou Mi barked. It got him a startled look, but it relaxed from Kuixian’s face too quickly.

“Oh. I don’t know. I guess it’s more interesting that my prison. You’d probably cut me up for dinner if I escaped and snuck in.”

What nonsense was he talking about? It was daylight. The guards had failed, or maybe been enchanted. They certainly had not brought Kuixian there on any orders.

“You must go back,” Zhou Mi said, but he was still, as Kuixian looked to his arm, looked all around him as though fascinated.

“I think I know when this is, but… Which camp’s army is this?”

He did not even know that. Zhou Mi huffed out a breath. “We fight to defend the East from invasion. But there are those even there who fight against us.”

“The Eastern army. There were thirteen?” Kuixian asked, and Zhou Mi’s nod was guarded. “And you are a general?”

“As was my father. All the Zhou men have gone to war.”

It was pride to say it, and it felt like a lull, the sun creating shadows, the cool of the wood as he pulled back his hand that had pinned Kuixian’s.

“Zhou,” Kuixian said, and his eyes widened. “Zhou…Mi?”

The question was on Zhou Mi’s lips to ask why the name surprised him, how Kuixian knew his name, but he started at the sound of feet on stone, and Zhou Mi’s eyes opened, the wood of the table hard against his cheekbone.

He’d been asleep. His head rose, taking in the whole of the tent. There was no man seated across from him, and the sun that had been bright had dimmed. Nothing was out of place, though his fingers were curled on his sword hilt. A dream. A dream of such reality, but just that. Kuixian could not have escaped his guard, not to wander in. And definitely not to speak as he had, when he could not put more than two words together.

The tension in Zhou Mi relaxed, though that did not mean he did not walk out to be sure the prisoner was still secure. The cage was small, and he did not see Kuixian’s face but assured himself that he was there.

“Let the prisoner out once daily if there is enough guard,” Zhou Mi ordered. “A few minutes to stretch and move, and to clean is enough.”

“Yes, General.”

It was not good to be too confined. He was still curious about the man. But there would be time after, when there was not a war to be won.

***

If there weren’t words Kyuhyun could understand, there were at least gestures. When the side of his cage was pulled open, Kyuhyun felt like a dog cowering away from a kick. The cage, in it’s horrifying way, was safety. He couldn’t get out, but no one also went in. In the middle of a war, he was a stranger, maybe even a threat. He’d already considered the possibility of torture, or maybe even death. But the man who opened his cage was not taking no for an answer, barking out an order and pointing in clear expectation that Kyuhyun exit immediately. But when he did that, standing with the help of the cage wall, he was ordered right back to pick up his toilet pot. Ah. Leaving had a function, then.

It made it a little easier to move, flexing his joints as he was led. The man had a sword, and Kyuhyun had a pot of piss, so it wasn’t like he had the upper hand. There wasn’t any question where he was being taken, because the smell from the hole almost made him want to pass out. It was easy enough to dispose of the contents into it, and his eyes were streaming as he was marched to the stream. He breathed through his mouth for a few moments as he crouched by the water. It looked clean at least, as wide as he was tall where he was anyway. He scooped up just enough water to rinse the pot out, tossing the water beside but not in the stream so it would at least have a chance to filter down through the soil. He was lucky he wasn’t in endless bouts of diarrhea already and hoped there wasn’t much upstream from him.

He had a brief hope that they got their water from a well. What a luxury to worry about that.

But he rinsed off his hands as best he could, washing his face, running his hands through his hair. His thighs ached, his shoulders. His whole body ached if he was honest, but he was alive. He grabbed a handful of leaves when his guard started talking and pointing back the way they had come. Kyuhyun picked up the pot with the leaves, his makeshift toilet paper, and kept his eyes to the ground. He didn’t want to look around too much. Be too curious.

But he was shuffled right back to hunch down in his cage and be shut back up. At least he could sit up in it. But he felt exhausted from just a few minutes of walking. At least it gave him something to focus on, patching together a mental map from his brief tour. He wrapped his blanket around him like a cape, tracing his path on the grass beneath him.

Sometimes his head lifted, thinking he heard the voice of the general, the one who’d saved him. Maybe that was what he should’ve been afraid of, that he’d changed his mind. It felt ungrateful to think he didn’t really feel saved. It didn’t keep him from worrying about what was next.

General. Zhou. It set off some vague recollection, filtered through conscious, wakefulness, and it would have sent him to his feet had he not been confined. He struggled to remember all of the council, but he could not remember another Zhou. Just Zhou Mi, the chronicler, the one who had written all of the poems including the one on the back of the shrine. Zhou Mi, a general of the Eastern army, an army that had absorbed several of the other twelve armies and fought to keep the invaders from the north and the west away. He’d arrived to a red sunrise, one like Zhou Mi had written about. The man he had seen was marching into battle.

Kyuhyun’s sound was frustration as he stilled himself, tried to relax his aching shoulders and to think. He didn’t remember all of the battles of the war. He’d been interested in it, interested in the strategy, but he’d mainly learned what he had to for exams and forgotten it over the years. He’d had to read “The Battle of Thirteen Armies” several times though, in fifth grade, in ninth. They’d learned what information there was on Zhou Mi’s life, about the poems he wrote, the battles the poems depicted, and the lonely life of a soldier. Why hadn’t he paid more attention?

There were mountains in the distance, ones he’d flown past a day or two before. He closed his eyes, and remembered when he’d been stumbling, or on the horse. Between where he could see and there, there was nothing, only hills. No smog, no high rises. Between being in the shrine, and arriving near the soldiers, he remembered no gaps. He hadn’t been drugged, or transported. He wasn’t on some sound stage. Kyuhyun heard the distant groans of men in pain, had seen soldiers milling, preparing. He didn’t want to believe it, but then again, he had found no other possible explanation.

If it was Zhou Mi, if he was to be interrogated again, he didn’t know how to make the general of an army who had fought years of battles to believe that Kyuhyun was not an enemy, but was from hundreds of years in the future.

***


	2. Part Two

***

Zhou Mi knew he was in a dream quicker that time. It was easier, perhaps, because he was not in his own tent, but in a cage made of wood with Kuixian staring back at him from the corner. One side of the covering cloth was lit, as the sun was setting, and the air was close and unpleasant. There was hardly enough room for one grown man, much less two.

“Are you really Zhou Mi?” Kuixian asked him.

“That is my name,” Zhou Mi said. Kyuhyun’s face betrayed nothing, his knee moving beneath the blanket draped over him.

“What are you going to do with me?”

It was a question he would have wanted to know the answer to as well, had their positions been reversed.

“Keep you. I don’t know where you’re from, how you came to be here. It’s not safe to send you away, if you’re a spy, or—“

Or worse. A man of magic. He didn’t know why he hesitated saying so. There were some things best held close.

“I am not a spy. I’m from East of here.”

“Then how were you not pressed to fight?”

Kyuhyun paused before answering that, and it made his answer sound suspect. “This war is not near where I live.”

It was impossible. It stretched to the seas, touched every corner he knew of. 

“Then you not from any land I know to the east. Where are you really from?”

“I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Men had withered under that stare, but all Kyuhyun did was shrug back his blanket, steadying himself on the wood frame. Zhou Mi wasn’t concerned, wasn’t afraid.

“All right. What I’ve told you so far has been true. My home is east of here, and my name is Cho Kyuhyun. I am not allied with any army. But the land, the country I am from, won’t exist in the form it is right now until years from now.”

Kyuhyun clearly took the moment of Zhou Mi frowning and processing to measure his reaction. But what he said made no sense.

“Then if I say, take me to your kin…?”

“I would tell you that they haven’t been born yet. Someone in my family is alive, but I don’t know them, who they are, where they live. There may be a solider fighting for you who is my ancestor. All I know is that I was in my own time, in a place of memorial for this war, and then I was here in the midst of your battle.”

“A memorial for this war,” Zhou Mi said slowly. He watched for a hint of deception, and there was none. There was something alive in Kuixian’s expression, as though he hoped Zhou Mi would leap to his feat and affirm his strange tale.

“If you are the Zhou Mi we know, then you’re…famous, I guess. Some of the others are, just from historical records. But the verses you wrote about the battle, about your life? People still read them.”

Zhou Mi nearly gasped, sitting forward at that. “No one has access to those. How could you possibly know— Then there is a spy.”

His trunk was locked, his tent guarded, and he had always checked to be sure nothing had been disturbed, and yet this stranger knew. Impossible things.

“No!” Kuixian said, shaking his head. “Do you still have my bag? There is a book in there. Please, look at it. It has that information about the shrine, and about you. I think you can read it!”

Kuixian said it like it was his last hope of Zhou Mi believing him. He vaguely remembered a book, but he’d put the bag away.

“I’ll look,” Zhou Mi said. “But what you speak of is impossible.”

Kuixian shrugged back into his blanket, looking so weary. “I thought so, too. I read so much about you. You’re younger than I thought you would be. I pictured you like someone’s grandfather.”

Grandfather! Zhou Mi scowled, and Kyuhyun yawned, his eyes inscrutable in the growing darkness.

Zhou Mi inhaled, his eyes opening to find his lantern flickering. He was in his own tent, and the shadows were growing. The prisoners were all fed and locked away by then. Zhou Mi looked to the bag he had taken from Kuixian, and thought of the dream. He half wanted to reach for it, to affirm for himself that the dream had no truth to it. But it was stubbornness that had him pushing to his feet, and pushing out into the cooling air so that he could inspect the camp for nightfall.

***

Kyuhyun knew the voice within the tent before he saw exactly to whom he was being taken, his arms bound and a hand rough as he was led. But he almost stumbled being led into the shadows, to see the interior. He’d touched that map. He knew that table. But it had just been a dream, he would have sworn it. And yet, there Zhou Mi was, standing as Kyuhyun was led in, but not in some kind of courtesy. He wasn’t in his full armor, the kind that looked riveted, but he was still dressed like a soldier, some kind of yellow over-tunic that made him look more like a general than the men who saw to Kyuhyun’s care. The solider escorting him was ordered out, from all he could tell, and Zhou Mi’s demand was short, sharp, incomprehensible.

He was holding out the guide book from Kyuhyun’s bag, pointing at the pages, the pictures, the words. Kyuhyun couldn’t read them, because the book was in several languages, but what he was pointing to were characters that he though Zhou Mi could read. That. That was what he’d been hoping for, that Zhou Mi would see it and understand.

“Yes,” Kyuhyun said, gesturing at the pages with his chin and then at Zhou Mi. “You. That’s talking about you. You!”

He had no idea what Zhou Mi said next, but it was probably something to do with the impossibility of it all. And Kyuhyun got that. He wouldn’t have been really accepting either if he was being told someone had been writing about him in a book from the future. Not to mention, the book talked about the war being over even if it didn’t discuss it in depth. Zhou Mi was irritated, impatient, and Kyuhyun didn’t blame him. Though no amount of pointing at the picture and talking could compel Kyuhyun to give him the answers he wanted.

People always asked, oh, who would you go back in time to meet? He’d read hundreds of Zhou Mi’s poems, learned about the war, and yeah, he might’ve chosen him at some point. He could hardly believe it really was Zhou Mi, right there, in dusty clothes, his hair bound back, his eyebrows drawn down like Kyuhyun was a thorn in his paw. It probably should’ve been cute. Hey, my name is Kyuhyun, and I’m a fan from the future. Want to show me around your war camp?

He could’ve stroked a few horse noses, and looked through all the maps and armor, and fucked right off back to reality when the swords were drawn. Prisoner of war, he could’ve lived without that.

Zhou Mi wanted answers, and all Kyuhyun could keep saying was, “You.”

That just seemed to irritate Zhou Mi even more until he seemed to try to glare Kyuhyun into the ground and sounded out an order to have Kyuhyun taken away.

If Zhou Mi had no reason to believe the book, he definitely had no reason to believe Kyuhyun. That, Kyuhyun suspected, was the only way he was getting out of his little cage that the solider escorting him shoved him back into after undoing the rope at his wrists. He didn’t know how far along the war was. When he tried to imagine years more confined, it made it a little hard to breathe. He could hardly imagine another week with nothing but the drone of insects and the sound of unfamiliar speech. He wasn’t a person who craved human contact, but just talking to someone, touching them, interacting. He’d started to crave it, and all he got was an angry and confused general who couldn’t even understand him.

His frustration got him through the rest of the day. No, he was calling it determination instead. When he finally did fall asleep, the men had finally ceased their patrol, and the warmth of the blanket finally lulled him.

***

Kyuhyun woke on the bank of the stream, almost rolling into it as he pushed himself up. Everything was so hazy as he tried to focus, but there was the sound of breathing not far from him and in the light from the nearby, Kyuhyun recognized the structure of the man’s face and his yellow tunic.

“It’s you again,” Zhou Mi said. “Have you come to mock me in dreams again?”

“When have I mocked you,” Kyuhyun said. “Is sleeping outside safe?”

There could be feral dogs, wild animals, escaped horses. Who knew, really.

“Would a prisoner care for my safety?” Zhou Mi scoffed.

“Another jailer might decide I was less trouble dead,” Kyuhyun said.

But the bickering made him pause, made him wonder as he stared at Zhou Mi’s profile. He’d spoken to Zhou Mi like that before, seen the inside of his tent, woken to Zhou Mi close in his little prison. He’d talked to Zhou Mi about the book. Maybe it was coincidence that Zhou Mi had seen it. But he thought there was no harm in asking.

“What were you trying to get me to tell you about the book?” Kyuhyun asked.

He knew that there were pictures of a modern city, of buildings. Zhou Mi, he’d be familiar with painting, with tapestry, and pottery. It would look like nothing he had ever seen. But Zhou Mi sat up at that, leaning toward him.

“It said little about the war, only that it was in the past which is impossible,” Zhou Mi said. “When it talked about the memorial shrine, it says it features a tribute to the “general and poet Zhou Mi.” I don’t understand.”

“One of your poems is there as a tribute to the dead, and as a tribute to you. If someone thinks of this war, they remember you.”

“Then you’re… Are you saying you’re from the time the book is from, the future.”

For all he knew, anyway. That or some alternate universe.

“Yes, I am.”

“It said the war lasted six years. How much longer is it from now to that time?” Zhou Mi asked.

“I don’t know. What year is it? I don’t know how your years are counted. I know from my own time, it is at least three hundred.”

“Three hundred!” Zhou Mi pushed himself onto his feet, pacing. Kyuhyun stood with him, feeling vulnerable on the ground. Zhou Mi was taller than him. “It is not possible.”

“Apparently it is! I can’t believe it either, but here I am. I didn’t ask to be brought back here into some bloodbath. How many— How many armies are left?”

“Five,” Zhou Mi said after a moment, his face half in shadow as he paused again. “Some have merged. Some have left. Five men are dead from an attack today, and they were rebuffed quickly by the numbers we put up against them.”

“Five armies,” Kyuhyun said softly. “The reason I remember that is because there will be four. There will be four left, when the war is over. One victor, three in retreat and ruin. The last to leave was… What was his name. Their general was famous, too, mostly for ridicule for running away at the very end. But people thought his going was actually the catalyst to the end of the war, because it gave the Eastern army - tired and sick of battle - a reason to attack with force, later. Liu! I think. General Liu. A horseman comes with the message, that Liu has broken camp and retreated. But I don’t know when. I wish I could tell you.”

He’d been rambling, and nearly flushed to realize Zhou Mi had been watching him so closely.

“If it is as you say, that I am remembered and that the Eastern army is renewed with vigor at Liu’s withdrawal, then is it our battle to win?”

Kyuhyun hesitated. He had maybe said too much, though he didn’t know how telling Zhou Mi what he had would affect the timeline, the future. He still existed, so apparently he hadn’t created some blip that shouldn’t have happened. But he also could not refuse to answer Zhou Mi’s direct question.

“If you are diligent and your choices are what history remembers them, then it is your battle to win,” Kyuhyun confirmed. 

Zhou Mi’s lips twisted wryly at that. “You mean I cannot just sit back and let victory fall at my feet? No, I cannot become overconfident on the words of a stranger, of a dream. You have proved nothing, even though this book of intricate paintings is strange, and your words are compelling. You are either a skilled liar and most accomplished spy, or very deluded, or perhaps a shaman coming into his power. I still cannot let you free, until this war is over, and I will apologize, because you may have family anticipating your return. But if no one finds proof of your deceit, when the war is ended, you will see freedom. That is all I can promise.”

“But your poems, I know some of them. I could try to prove it to you.”

“If this is a dream of my mind’s own making, then what proof is that?” Zhou Mi asked. “Only me remembering what I have written, coming from the mouth of dream stranger. And there still is the possibility of a spy if it it some magic.”

“But we’ve talked like this before. Your tent. My cage. I told you about the book, and you found it. Have you ever had a dream like these?”

“No. If it were true, it is a magic I cannot believe in.”

“I don’t know what it is, but it is,” Kyuhyun insisted. “There has to be a reason we can understand each other. I had to come back here because of something, and you’re the only one I can talk to. I need you to believe me.”

“You have to believe me,” Kyuhyun murmured against the blanket, and slipped deeper into sleep.

***

It was five days before Zhou Mi saw their strange captive again. His day both ended and began with a briefing with the captains of the guard and scouts, and when he surveyed the camp at dawn, he heard his report of the prisoners. Kuixian was quiet, but mannerly it seemed. On Zhou Mi’s orders, he was let out from his enclosure twice daily under guard to stretch his legs and empty his pot. When the weather permitted, the cloth was drawn back too, so that it was not a plain surface to look at all hours of the day. Not all of their captives had that same treatment, but Kuixian was not, to their knowledge, a prisoner of the war but a casualty of it. Men could lose control of their minds confined too much. And he half feared if Kuixian was a spy, or a shaman, then confinement would only continue to cause the intrusions into his thoughts and sleep. Those little changed had kept it from happening again, or perhaps he slept too deeply.

Besides that report, the prisoners were not on his mind much. He was in control of only one part of the camp, and there was a council, other generals, to meet with, advise, collaborate. And to argue with. There were a number of abrasive personalities, and infighting, but the goals were the same even if there were some who also craved glory in addition to victory.

But the sound of a galloping horse had everyone alert, although the reaction relaxed when the horse and rider both were recognized.

“Generals, sir, I have news,” the breathless soldier said. “General Liu has retreated! Our scouts found their camp broken up and abandoned this morning. They have not gone to join another army, but they have left, sir!”

There were some murmurs, a couple of exclamations of the news. It sounded positive on its surface, but every word had sent prickles across Zhou Mi’s skin. The five armies had become four, the news delivered by a rider.

Perhaps it was coincidence. It could have been so many things, but when he turned it over in his mind as he paced alone, he feared he was beginning to believe. The problem was, he didn’t know what that meant, or what he should do about it.

***

Rain was a relief at times, ridding some of the muggy air, washing away smells. On particularly warm days, when Kyuhyun was let out to stretch his legs, he’d washed out his underwear and shirt, letting go of any inhibition and just plunging right into the creek. He felt more human when he got back into his pants, huddling back in his cage in his blanket as his clothes dried. It made him feel less itchy, and it got the stink of fear off at least. He didn’t know what else he smelled of. Boredom. Apprehension. Every time he left, he made mental notes. Positions of trees, the closest tents, the other prisons. Kyuhyun was on the end closest to the main encampment, and furthest from the Pit of Poo as he’d been taking to call it. His end was a little more protected, and more patrolled. It made it harder to imagine just slipping away.

He slogged through the mud of the day’s rain to empty his pot, to clean his hands and race right back into his shelter. Even then, he was mostly drenched, and he shrugged back into his dry shirt that he’d left behind, breathing into his hands as he gripped tight on his blanket. Kyuhyun didn’t see the lightning, but the rumble of thunder seemed to shiver through the ground.

Kyuhyun groaned, but he was still quick to reach out and tug in the bowl of soup that he’d been provided. Just because he was a big sitting duck for getting offed by lightning didn’t mean he had to do so hungry. The food, not being able to be choosy about it, wasn’t all that bad. He’d seen wagons rolling in, food from beyond the lines. Most days there was no meat, but some days there was, even if he didn’t know what it happened to be. Probably it was better not knowing. He’d lost weight, there was no doubt about that, but his clothes weren’t exactly falling off of him yet. He actually preferred soup to anything else. At least he knew it had been boiled.

A bolt of lightning snaked across outside the split in the covering. He left it open, if the wind wasn’t blowing in rain. The guards had never reprimanded him for opening or closing it, as long as they could still peer in at him and make sure he was still there and breathing.

Lightning. Lightning. Blood. Thunder.

No, he remembered. He remembered that. It had him gulping down the rest of his soup to shake the wood of his cage.

“Hey! Hey, someone! Can someone hear me! I need to see Zhou Mi! Hey!”

His voice got progressively louder until not one but two guards came over to see what the problem was.

“Zhou Mi! I need to see Zhou Mi. Tell him— Fuck, what can you tell him. Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi!”

He wished he knew the word for general. He pointed at himself, toward the direction of the tent.

One of them said something and shoved at stick in at him like he was some kind of dog who needed to be quieted. Kyuhyun shook his head and kept saying Zhou Mi’s name and pointing.

They left him even as he shouted after them. He hissed and smacked his palms against the wood.

All that got him was sore palms. He was going to give it five minutes, and if they didn’t come back, he’d start shouting again. And again. All night if he had to, until someone either knocked him out or took him to Zhou Mi.

It was pouring down rain when they dragged him out of his cage, even as he braced for a beating. They bound his arms and marched him forward, and he was dripping and cold when he was pushed into Zhou Mi’s tent. Zhou Mi was dressed in unrelieved brown, his hair wet like he’d been out in the rain as well, and Kyuhyun could have shouted with relief. But that was only half the battle, as Zhou Mi gestured for the men to go. They took the ropes that bound him, too, and Zhou Mi looked him over, tilting his head.

What did Kyuhyun want, was his clear question.

“I remember the lightning, and the other armies are going to attack,” Kyuhyun said. “I don’t know if it was tonight. But I know people died. But how do I tell you that?”

Paper. Or dirt. Most of the ground was covered, but there was a strip along the edge, and he went to that, gesturing Zhou Mi to follow. He drew a crude stick figure in a circle.

“You,” Kyuhyun said. That was one word he knew, pointing at the stick figure and at Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi nodded his understanding.

Kyuhyun drew four other stick figures and four circles further away to represent the other armies.

“You, and this is them. Them,” Kyuhyun said, gesturing like he was pointing into the distance.

Zhou Mi crouched down near him, and Kyuhyun wondered if he understood what he was getting at. Zhou Mi reached out, and with a finger, slashed through one of the far circles.

“Liu,” Zhou Mi said, meeting Kyuhyun’s eyes. He crossed through the circle again to prove his point.

The only word that sounded like that that Kyuhyun knew in numbers was six. Which meant, if he was crossing out Liu’s camp, then the army had left as Kyuhyun remember. He counted in his head. One, two, three—

“Four?” Kyuhyun said.

Zhou Mi nodded, and Kyuhyun had a dozen questions that another boom of thunder had him sitting on because it wasn’t the time. They had bigger issues.

“The thunder, the lightning, it’s a good cover,” Kyuhyun said, babbling and unable to help himself even if he knew Zhou Mi couldn’t understand. He drew lightning into the dirt between his depiction of Zhou Mi and their camp and the three other armies. “Boom! Boom!”

He mimicked thunder, and the sound of attacking men, using his fingers to simulate men running in from the other camps to Zhou Mi’s. Thunder rolling, men attacking, under the cover of night and sound.

“You wrote about it,” Kyuhyun said, saying “you” again, and then miming writing. He made the sounds again, repeating his actions.

Zhou Mi said something, and Kyuhyun wanted to shout that he couldn’t understand it. But Zhou Mi was standing, going to the opening of the tent and speaking to whoever was waiting outside. He stayed where he was, ready to argue, to figure to get his point across if he had to.

A dry rag landed half on Kyuhyun’s head, half on his shoulder, and Zhou Mi tugged at the wet cloth at Kyuhyun’s shoulder, giving an order with it that was pretty plain. A shiver wracked him as he started to peel off his shirt, and a moment later, a robe was set near him. Zhou Mi was still giving orders as he was working, people scrambling in and out of the tent. It was obvious something was happening, something was being set in motion, and he sat in that robe and didn’t move until he and Zhou Mi were the only ones left in the tent.

“What if it’s not tonight?” Kyuhyun asked, huddling in the robe Zhou Mi had given him. Zhou Mi stared at him, and Kyuhyun shook his head. He had a lot of worries, and a lot of hope to go with that. Unless Zhou Mi’s poem and the historical record had lied, something had happened on a night of a storm. He no longer was worrying about Zhou Mi not believing him as much as he was about exhausting the men who had to watch for an attack that might not come. In telling Zhou Mi too, he wondered what would happen. Would the attack still happen as it would have, or was it some kind of time traveling paradox where Zhou Mi in all versions of events was warned so that he and the generals could make adjustments. He wondered what Zhou Mi’s plan was, as Zhou Mi draped the armor he had donned with some sort of oilskin.

Zhou Mi pointed to Kyuhyun, and then at the spot he was sitting in and spoke. It wasn’t hard to figure that one out.

Kyuhyun nodded, still rubbing at his hair with the rag. “Yes, I’ll stay here.” And he paused, inhaling. “Good luck.”

He hoped Zhou Mi at least understood those words. 

The last thing Zhou Mi did before leaving the tent was to toss a blanket at Kyuhyun’s feet, and then he was gone. Kyuhyun wrapped it around his shoulders, and exhaled. And still he gasped as the tent lit with a flash of light, and thunder startling him even so. The storm approached. Enemies, if he was right, were too. Rain ebbed and fell, wind tugging at the tied opening of the tent. He wanted to stay awake, for when Zhou Mi returned, or if someone else did. He had a moment of panic, almost standing up, when he wondered what would happen to him if Zhou Mi were killed. But it wasn’t the end of the war. He knew Zhou Mi lived at least to the end of the war, unless he had done something to change that. It made him groan, curling into a ball and resting his head on his knees as he waited. He heard footsteps, distant shouts. The storm continued, and Kyuhyun moved onto his side on the ground, his eyes on the opening of the tent that Zhou Mi would come through. He just needed to be sure that Zhou Mi was okay.

***

The armor felt heavier on Zhou Mi’s shoulders than usual, perhaps from the rain. Even if the rain still fell, one edge of the sky lightened as the sun struggled to rise. Men were dead. One section of the encampment of a fellow general had been overrun. And yet still, they had fought back with a fury, repelling the surprise attack. He didn’t know if it was intended as a blow, as a raid. But no man left with anything more than he had come with. And some less than that. It was all he had needed.

When his men asked him why they were preparing for battle in the dead of night, in the midst of a storm, he hadn’t known what to tell them. One person of every tent stayed awake, lights extinguished, ready on his orders as he stayed high and watched the trees.

He’d been tired, and cold, and cranky, but a flash of lightning - that should have been the source of their cover in the thunder’s roars, revealed the mass of men and horses racing from the tree line.

He’d sounded the alarm. They’d been ready, and he’d walked through puddles tinged red. They’d dealt a blow.

Kyuhyun had not moved from the spot Zhou Mi had pointed to, though he was on his side. He didn’t stir when Zhou Mi entered, or when he shed the heavy armor and changed. He had one last thing to do, and he pulled the paper to him, picking up his brush.

Zhou Mi tucked the new verse away that he had written, his eyes lingering on Kyuhyun’s sleeping form for a moment before he prepared for his own rest.

Lightning strikes,  
Blood stains the ground,  
The thunder crashes,  
But quiet words are louder.

***


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief experiences of torture

***

The glow of the sun was warm, and Zhou Mi didn’t want to leave it, sighing and sleepily considering the tent wall. The tent. Morning had come. No. No, he was dreaming because he felt like he could float away and Kuixian was there, still curled in his place. Zhou Mi walked to him, kneeling near him. If he was that asleep, then the storm was over.

“Did it— Did they not attack?” Kuixian asked, looking half afraid.

Zhou Mi shook his head. “They did. We lost thirty of our own men. But for your warning, it might have been twice, three times that many.” And the smile that touched Zhou Mi’s face had no humor in it. “We dealt them their own losses.”

There was relief on Kuixian’s face, and it was explained by his words. 

“I worried it wouldn’t happen, if it had happened on another day. I’m only telling you the truth. It’s so frustrating not to just be able to tell you things. But you said Liu had left? It’s just four armies now.”

“Yes, General Liu’s army has retreated. A rider came to us to deliver the news, as you said,” Zhou Mi said, watching carefully for Kuixian’s reaction.

What he saw was relief. Hope.

“Then you believe me?”

“I do not know what to believe. There is no proof. Perhaps your imagination is very good, and very lucky. Perhaps you had been of Liu’s camp, and had been sent to win my trust this way. Perhaps you are colluding with the others.”

Kuixian began shaking his head in the middle of that, each movement getting sharper. “No, I’ve never seen or met anyone from one of the other armies. Your men keep me away from the prisoners as well, so you know I haven’t received any news from them.”

“But hundreds of years of years from now they know of this war,” Zhou Mi said. His disbelief felt like it had melded into his bones. Any other man, and Zhou Mi would not even have bothered. There were enough questions and hints to make him curious, something about this man that was different than the men he commanded. But what, he didn’t know for sure.

“I wish I could show you. Where this tent is, there’s an entire city. Buildings ten, twenty times as tall. You can’t even see the mountains from here. It’s… It’s generations from now.”

“Will you tell me if you remember more?”

“I’ll try,” Kuixian said. “You might have to tell your guards that I’m not just shouting at random. And then, if it’s not like this, then… I’ll draw my best stick figures.”

Zhou Mi laughed a little at Kuixian’s embarrassment. Kuixian laughed with him.

“The information was relayed, still. Talking like this has helped. I might have let you shout down the sky last night, and many more would be dead.”

Kuixian looked toward the tent entrance, to the strange light beyond it. “I wish I knew why I was here. Why we can talk like this, why—“

Their eyes met, before the dream wavered. Zhou Mi roused to the sound of horse’s hooves and the dim light that said dawn was passing. Kuixian’s head rose as well, his eyes still sleepy as they looked to each other again. Zhou Mi didn’t smile that time, rising to his feet and opening the tent entrance to flag down a soldier. Within a few breaths, soldiers were there to pull Kuixian to his feet, to get him back into his shirt, and return him to his prison.

Zhou Mi knew that something was happening, something he couldn’t understand. At the center of it, Kuixian. He’d meant what he remembered in his dream, that men would have died but for Kuixian’s warning. But awake, and sliding his armor on, it seemed too fantastical. They could no more converse than he could speak to his horse. The guard would be alerted that if Kuixian asked for him, he would be brought without question. He would be careful, and he would watch. If Kuixian meant them harm, he would slip up, eventually.

And though Zhou Mi wanted to sleep, he went out to greet the morning and oversee his men.

***

“The strange prisoner is gone.”

It was only something important that had a soldier waking Zhou Mi from a sound sleep. He did not even bother donning his armor, getting on his feet immediately and following the soldier toward where the prisoners were kept. Anger, disgust, roared within him. No, the prisoner had not been some paragon. If someone had been neglectful of their duties, there would be punishment. Spies, there was a reason they were kept close. Kuixian knew things about the camp, things that he could pass on to the three remaining armies. There was no vigilance too great for the danger they were suddenly in.

“We heard a sound on patrol, and started inspecting. We checked every prisoner, but when we got to his, it was empty and open.”

It felt like his ears were roaring when they strode up to the empty cell, lanterns bright. The bowl for water had been overset. It looked like the door had been all but wrested from the cell, strong ties that were checked daily. His attention directed to the ground under their feet, soft soil, what looked like the drag of fingers, of something heavier. Footmarks, some that were obliterated.

“It looks like someone was moved without being willing,” Zhou Mi said, and the soldier shadowed him as they worked toward the stream. Something bright shone back at him, and Zhou Mi hurried to it. One of the odd shoes that Kuixian wore. “You said you heard a sound. What did it sound like?”

“Someone fighting. But when I saw the cage, it seemed like maybe someone had come to rescue him.”

“Maybe.”

But those things didn’t add up. The shoe, the marks. For all Zhou Mi’s mistrust, Kuixian had been eager to help, relieved when he had, even when he’d put himself in some danger to get to Zhou Mi with the information. Those things could have been there on purpose, to throw them off. But the odd things Kuixian had come with, those were not so easily conjured.

“I want a small riding party gathered,” Zhou Mi said. “We’ll travel light and fast. I want to see if we can find who it was, and where they took him. Why they took him.”

The feeling of his stomach being gnawed on was back. If it was one of the other armies, he thought of why he would have arranged to steal away a prisoner not even of their own rank. If they had heard there was an informant was one. But if that were the case, then there was a spy or an informant in Zhou Mi’s own camp. That, or they had taken back one of their own before he was ready to go, or perhaps he had changed sides.

Kuixian was just one man, but he also knew things. He had some sort of power that Zhou Mi did not understand. That was what had him taking action. That was power, and information, that he couldn’t let fall into anyone else’s hands.

***

There were two men with lanterns following the trail, and three on horseback including Zhou Mi. All he could have was patience, and the knowledge that it had not been long. The sky was clear, so there was no danger of rain washing away the trail, as long as it was able to be followed. They lost the trail briefly at the tree line, and those on horseback hung back as they watched the sway of light within the trees. Not only that, not only scouting, they were watching for an ambush, if it was some sort of trap.

His horse felt his anxiety, tossing his head and edging to the side beneath him. He murmured an apology, stroking the horse’s neck.

There, the signal, three flashes of light. They’d picked up the trail again. Zhou Mi blew out a slow breath and led the others into the trees. The area was familiar from frequent patrols to be sure of their position, but night changed things. The distances were harder to judge, branches catching at his armor, and the sound of rustling from the wind making his back stay straight and his hand ready on his sword. They followed the lights of the trackers, slowing as they slowed, with little conversation except to note their position. Zhou Mi glanced up at the moon, full and round and infrequently crossed by clouds. If the moon set, there would be no chance he would keep his men out further. The light helped, but it was a danger to them also. It was a risk.

It was a needful risk, and he did not question his decision.

The trackers stopped, and Zhou Mi guided his horse up to them.

“Down there, there’s a gulley, a fire. Four men. One of them might be the prisoner,” 

Four men. Zhou Mi dismounted, making his way, slow and quiet to the vantage point they had found. He had three men on horses, two on foot, and it was not enough. Two bows and arrows, but the distance was too great, and the men had not been stupid. There was a cliff abutting the gulley, and no cover of brush to sneak up to the fire with. He wished he had the eyes of an eagle, but even without it, he could see that three of the men were dressed alike, and one man sat without a shirt and his head lowered. That was Kuixian, he knew. He was alive, and the aggressive stance of the man near him told Zhou Mi a great many things.

It didn’t appear Kuixian was known, or had been taken willingly.

Zhou Mi made his way back to his horse, mounting again and listened to the opinions of his men. How to approach, how to draw them away possibly.

The hoarse, distant scream that rent the air was that of a man in desperate pain, and the tremble along Zhou Mi’s skin had him nearly moving forward. He would have except for the hand that found his elbow, held him still.

“We can’t. There’s too many of them.”

“They could kill him,” Zhou Mi said, and the words were thick in his throat.

“They might. It sounds like it could be kinder than what they’re doing now.”

Zhou Mi wasn’t sure if he made a sound, or if it was only in his head as he grabbed for his own shoulder and squeezed until his fingers strained. It felt like the pain was radiating down into the ground, pulsing away from him in great white rings. He gathered the reins, his horse tossing his head.

“We go now,” Zhou Mi said, his voice echoing hollow in his ears.

He drew out his sword.

The thunder of hooves on hard ground shook through deep into his bones, protests, warnings, falling away from him. They clattered onto hard rock and two men sitting around the small fire leaped to their feet to join the third. He roared, like he was an army of a thousand men, not knowing how many were at his back. A sentry ran to meet him, and fell as Zhou Mi’s sword dragged out of him. Two men ran, and he ignored them, wheeling his horse and cutting down the soldier trying to take out his horse from behind.

It left him with one man, and Kuixian.

“Now,” Zhou Mi said, and held out his hand in demand.

They clasped each other’s arms, Kuixian vaulting up from a log near the fire and settling behind Zhou Mi’s saddle.

Another soldier rummaged frantically. He saw a bow.

But as soon as Kuixian’s arm was around him, the horse surged against Zhou Mi’s heels, making for the trees. He jolted against a hit on his shoulder, heard his men volleying arrows back toward the soldiers. But they swept into the trees, taking a hill in two long strides and meeting the remainder of his uneasy men as the others on horseback joined them.

“Return to camp,” Zhou Mi said. “They may be going after others.”

No one questioned his recklessness. There could have been a hundred men hiding beyond the hollow, an ambush against the stealing of the prisoner. And yet, he didn’t know how to tell them that he had known there had not been. Or maybe, that he would have gone even if he had known. Even to himself he had no explanation.

Kuixian made soft sounds of pain as they made through the trees, the horses trotting briskly back into the open and into camp.

“You did well. Go, rest. Send a healer,” he told his men.

They asked for no explanation, and he offered none. It would have been weakness. But his bones felt like water when he slid from his horse, looking up and surprised to see that Kuixian was clutching an arrow. Zhou Mi felt for the back of his arm, feeling the hole in the outer later. His armor had stopped it, and he pried the arrow from Kuixian’s hand and threw it near the tent. If not for Zhou Mi’s support, Kuixian would have buckled as his feet hit the ground.

The healer and his attendants hurried just as Zhou Mi got Kuixian seated near the outer fire. It was then he saw the burns, branded into Kuixian’s shoulder.

***

The injuries, none of them were so severe. Kuixian was not entirely unconscious but he was shivering and trying to push at the hands that were trying to help him. They had to fight him down until he was prone, until he could be helped. It was as though after the men had realized he had no answers to give, they had hurt him for sheer amusement. An eye was swollen, his mouth bruised, and blood drying where it had dripped from his hairline and nose. 

Zhou Mi winced to see tiny cuts along Kuixian’s back as though someone had jabbed at him with a knife. The brand was still the worst, though, high on his back near his shoulder. It was not one, but several marks like someone had pushed at him with a burning stick. The healer blew out a breath, having returned with fresh water after dumping out the water that had tinged pink from blood.

“Someone ground sand into this wound,” the healer said. All Zhou Mi could do was remember Kuixian’s screams. Water trickled over the burn and Kuixian whimpered. Grains of sand washed away but others were left, and to wash away more was going to be pain itself. Zhou Mi looked away, not because he couldn’t stomach it, but because he felt a need to comfort.

“You are safe. We’re helping you. It will be over soon,” Zhou Mi said. He squeezed Kuixian’s shoulder, trying to ground him, to keep him still. It was over within breaths, salve spread on the burn and a cloth to protect it, and Kuixian brought up to sit and sip something hot from a cup.

“It is all we can do for now,” the healer said. “I’ve cleaned his wounds as best I can. If it doesn’t fester, the burn will heal. The cuts are healing. He will need to move eventually, even if it hurts, to keep this skin from going tight.”

“For now though, he can rest?”

“Yes. The salve should help, and the tea for pain. He should be moving before the midday meal. Send for me, and I’ll check him again.”

“I will do that,” Zhou Mi said.

He was not playing nursemaid, but it was simple enough to watch out for a man in pain. Kuixian was not a soldier, but he had been under Zhou Mi’s protection. It was an act of aggression, and it was not retaliation so much for Kuixian himself, but for the sake of them all. The enemy would be ready for reprisal, so it took a bit of cunning to formulate an attack that would not put themselves in jeopardy as well.

Zhou Mi stood, intending to call for a soldier, to have Kuixian taken back to the cell. And yet, he thought of Kuixian, who had just barely begun to stop shaking. There wasn’t even room to stretch out in, in that cell, and the door had not been repaired. Besides, the men who had taken him had learned he was in that place, and that would be the first place again they would look if they dared return again for him.

“Make a pallet in my tent,” Zhou Mi said, and a soldier left to comply.

He would keep no weapons but for his sword, and he did not sleep deeply. At least for that night, with the morning approaching too quickly, it would have to do.

Kuixian staggered between Zhou Mi and a soldier, but they got him to the pallet. The soldier was dismissed, and the tent closed, and Zhou Mi made sure the cloth was still covering the burns. A blanket was drawn up over Kuixian’s body.

“You stay there,” Zhou Mi said, tapping the ground to emphasize his words. Kuixian nodded, and Zhou Mi was satisfied, standing fully.

“I didn’t tell them anything.”

“What?” Zhou Mi asked, studying Kuixian’s shadowed face.

“They wanted me to, I think,” Kuixian said. “But I didn’t tell them anything.”

“You did well, then,” Zhou Mi said.

Even soldiers would break under threat of pain. Kuixian seemed to relax from the praise, but the way his hand was still tight on the cloth he rested on, Zhou Mi knew the pain of the burn and the cleaning must have still been radiating through him.

Zhou Mi found his place across the tent, his heavy armor shed, and he leaned against his trunk and listened to Kuixian’s careful breathing. His eyelids tugged down, ready to whimper as much as his guest, pain darting through his shoulder as he sank into sleep.

***

Zhou Mi roused to the sound of footsteps, light bright in the tent. Kuixian didn’t seem to have moved, still face down on the pallet, his back moving slowly as he breathed. Clearly asleep. One less thing to worry about. He’d been up several times, and the guard had been tight through the night after their impromptu rescue mission. There could have been no way to predict against retaliation, or information gleaned, no matter how much that Kuixian had insisted that no information was given.

There in, daylight, Zhou Mi blinked, staring hard at Kuixian again. Up to that day, Kuixian’s only words had been halting. Yes, you, number words. But the night previous he’d spoken in perfect sentences.

And if he could speak in sentences to Zhou Mi, he could have spoken in sentences to the raiders. The burns could have been little more than—

Zhou Mi pushed to his feet, nudging firmly against Kuixian’s side. It took two more pushes before Kuixian groaned and turned his head to look at Zhou Mi.

“Tell me again what information you gave to the men who took you,” Zhou Mi said, his voice low and even. Anger trembled inside of him, for the risk he had taken, had put his men through. And if for a spy—

Kuixian’s eyes widened, his pupils blown. “I didn’t tell them anything! I couldn’t understand their questions—“

And he gasped, almost pushing himself up before wheezing with pain.

“Couldn’t understand their questions. Soldier!” Zhou Mi shouted, standing and waiting for one of the guards to push into the tent. “Get someone to help and take the prisoner to be questioned. Find out what information he relayed. Beat him if you must.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No! No,” Kuixian insisted, on his knees and gripping at his injured shoulder. “I’m not lying! I can understand you, but I couldn’t understand them. Is this— Is this like one of the dreams? You sat with me in my cell and talked to me. We talked about your maps, here. Right here! At the river, I told you about the rider and the four armies!”

Zhou Mi shook his head. They were ruses. A man telling tales, words he couldn’t listen to. He’d allowed the man to sleep in his tent. He’d been blinded by the injury, by the assurances of some fantastic dreams and scratches in the dirt.

“Sir, should we take him now?”

Two soldiers had returned, and Zhou Mi nodded at them.

“Yes, take him.”

“No, no. Please! You have to listen to me! They burned me because I couldn’t understand their questions! They burned— Ow! Please, stop! Please, make them— Zhou Mi! No, stop!”

Kuixian’s voice rose almost to a shriek, and Zhou Mi looked at that, fingers of the solider clutching into the bandage over his shoulder as they had him halfway out of the tent.

“If you grip into his burns, he will fight you the whole way there,” Zhou Mi said.

“Understood, sir. But sir… All he rants in is gibberish. How will we know what information he gave?”

“You’ll understand just as he’s been speaking now,” Zhou Mi snapped.

The soldiers looked at each other. “But he hasn’t said a word we understand.”

“He’d been speaking clearly since we brought him back,” Zhou Mi said. “Have you cleaned your ears?”

“They can’t understand me?” Kuixian asked, panting and staring Zhou Mi. “Is that what they’re telling you?”

Zhou Mi ignored him, speaking to the soldiers. “There. Tell me what he said.”

“Can you understand him, sir? It sounds like he is rolling words in his mouth, but words I’ve never heard.”

Zhou Mi wanted to argue back, to tell them it was impossible, but he knew the two men. They had never been known to lie, and he was tempted to have them drag the prisoner right back to his cell.

“Perhaps, if you can understand him, then you might wish to speak to him?” the soldier suggested. “Maybe there is someone else in camp who speaks whatever dialect he speaks?”

“Put him there, on the pallet,” Zhou Mi said. “And bring the healer.”

“What did he say?” Kuixian asked, looking at the soldier who had spoken, and barely catching himself from sprawling onto his face as he was pushed down onto the pallet again. He groaned, the action likely stretching the wound. Kuixian didn’t move, panting as he stayed still there on the ground. Zhou Mi paced only as far as his sense would let him, standing on one far side of his table and waiting until the healer asked for entrance.

Zhou Mi only watched, offering no assurance as Kuixian sat still and let the healer pull the bandages from him. From Kuixian’s face it hurt, and badly, pulling away from his flesh even with the layer of plants that the healer had placed over the salve. The wounds were angry and red, but the redness had not spread far beyond the borders, and there was no pus that he could see.

“Tomorrow, the next day, will tell the story of how this will heal,” the healer said. “If there is still no purification, it will heal more easily. If it does… We can clean the wound, but it may be a hard battle for him to win.”

“Do what you can,” Zhou Mi said.

Kuixian was listening intent as the healer spoke, but his eyes swung startled to Zhou Mi.

“Is it bad? What did he—“

The sound was utter pain as the healer cleansed the wound with some type of dark liquid. Kuixian’s hands tightened to fists as he whimpered. Then, the salve which wracked him with shudders as it raced over sensitive skin.

“Please, no more,” Kuixian rasped, and the healer clucked his tongue, finishing with the layer of healing plants and wrapping him again in bandages.

“That is all, and you will heal,” the healer said, and began to gather his tools to leave.

“Did you understand his words?” Zhou Mi asked.

“No, General. I don’t understand his tongue, whatever it is.”

“But you answered him.”

The healer smiled. “The language of pain requires no words. He should drink this tea now, and once more at sunset with the second packet, and it will help him sleep. Is there anything else you require?”

“No. Thank you.”

They were alone again, and Kuixian’s eyes were red, bright with unshed tears.

“Could he understand me?” Kuixian asked.

“No.”

“But why. Why do you?”

They stared at each other, one man miserable with pain, and he utterly with doubt.

“I don’t know. You said you were no spy—“

“I’m from the future,” Kuixian said. He didn’t care he was interrupting, that was clear. His eyes were fierce. “I fell into your battle, and I wanted to help you. Then they…took me. And I couldn’t have told them anything, because I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand.”

Zhou Mi turned as Kuixian began to weep silently. Pain, exhaustion perhaps catching up to him. He could have gotten a soldier to brew the tea, but he did it himself. It gave him time to think. His anger had cooled, but his confusion hadn’t. They had been unable to understand each other before, and there was no reason to have then. He’d found nothing familiar in the curling sounds that Kuixian had made. And he knew that was what Kuixian still spoke, but he knew beyond doubt that he understood every word that Kuixian said. Perhaps it was he that was deluded. The dreams, everything adding to omens that spelled nothing good.

Kuixian had collected himself by the time that Zhou Mi returned with the tea, and Kuixian took it gingerly from him.

“Thank you,” Kuixian said.

He had no reason to believe Kuixian was lying, when his own men could not understand. Magic, again? But even in the depths of his pain, the healer could not understand.

“This isn’t poison, is it?” Kuixian asked a moment later.

As though he would kill Kuixian after saving him. Even if he’d been a traitor, it would not have been his decision.

“No, it’s medicine to help you heal, and for the pain.”

“It tastes like poison,” Kuixian muttered.

Zhou Mi’s lips twitched without his consent. But he left Kuixian there to drink his tea, returning shortly with a soldier and clothes. Kuixian rose and walked carefully, the cloth clutched to his chest. They’d move him to a different cell, and he would stay there. No more intrigue.

And yet, he pulled out the book that Kuixian had arrived with, stroking a finger against its glossy pages and reading of the war memorial. His own name, there on the page. Kuixian’s screams, and the way he’d almost felt it. He didn’t know what to make of it, any of it, and he had no one to ask. All he could do was wait.

***

The cell they took Kyuhyun to was of a size to the first one, but it smelled of an old toilet and things he didn’t want to think of. He’d been brought some kind of shirt, and after he’d been locked inside, he shrugged into it, trying not to dislodge his bandages. The tea had made him feel heavy, almost floating, which was preferable to the searing pain. The burn seemed to sit on his skin, sparking across his nerves, fading into the background only rarely only to come roaring back when he moved, or breathed even.

When he’d seen Zhou Mi riding up to rescue him, he’d just wanted to get away. There’d been part of him half afraid of being cut down with his attackers, but Zhou Mi had pulled him up onto the horse with him, and all of his thoughts of being sure he would die had begun fading. They were going to get away, arrows whistling.

The men had shouted at him, shook him, stripped him of his shirt. He twisted as he sat, reliving how he had twisted to try and get away from the glowing stick they had branded him with.

“No,” he said half out loud, and turned and pressed his cheekbone against a pole of the cell. He breathed so carefully, trying to fight the panic clutching at his chest, his throat. He wasn’t there, they weren’t hurting him any more. He was in a cell, surrounded by guards. It was daytime, and no one would sneak in to steal him again.

He’d thought he was safe, and Zhou Mi had— Zhou Mi had ordered the soldiers to beat information from him. His laugh was bordering on hysterical, nails digging into the fabric of his pants. He didn’t know why he’d lied to himself, why he’d trusted. They were in the middle of a war, and it was not a decision that was personal. Zhou Mi had thought him a traitor, and them being able to understand each other suddenly reinforced that fear. It made sense, when he explained it to himself. But Zhou Mi, he’d attached all his hope to after falling into the battle, and he didn’t know where he could put that any more.

All he could do was get through it. Get through the pain, make it through to the next day. He half didn’t want to lie down in case someone came to drag him away again.

He belatedly realized he had only one shoe on, and didn’t care right then. It was enough to make himself a pillow with. He checked which corner smelled the least disgusting, and put his head there, whimpering as he tried to arrange the blanket over himself. He made it, partly. He barely got his arm tucked under, before he shivered and slept.

***

His dinner had come with another cup of the horrible tea, and the contents made him even drowsier than the tea from before. He slept, much as he had before, waking to tweaks in his shoulder, to pain that seared and faded to throbbing. It matched his head, as he fished bugs out of his water and drank it anyway. Sounds had him jolting, and he woke to a bowl of soup and wiped sweat from his forehead as he drank it.

When he was ordered out, he crawled, walking on his dirty socks and sitting as a man he took to be the healer clucked over his shoulder and smeared more of the soothing, stinging liquid onto him. He was bandaged and wrapped, and sent right back to his cell.

And even being shaken, he’d looked for Zhou Mi and hadn’t seen him. Maybe on purpose. Maybe Zhou Mi was off doing whatever it was that generals did.

The less he was consumed by pain, the more he wanted when he was shut back up in his cell. All he wanted was an ice pack, a bowl of juk, and maybe a gallon of something sweet. And maybe a toothbrush. Though the gross tea the man had forced on him had at least quieted his mind as he drowsed until he was brought his dinner.

He stiffened, remembering the wound being cleaned, the scream he’d tried to hold back. It felt like it had been someone else, some other life, and he pressed his cheek into his shoelaces and stared at the wood bars of his cell.

***

Kyuhyun felt more in control of himself, when he was sent for again, his arms bound behind his back before they left the cell. It had him squeaking in pain as the skin around his burns was tugged and moved, but he breathed through it. It had rained heavily through the morning as predicted with the sunrise, but it had cleared at last. He staggered as he walked, the sun low and starting down toward the other horizon, and he squinted, stiffened, as he was led toward Zhou Mi’s tent. But for all the terrible he felt, Zhou Mi looked worse. His face, his hair, was slightly damp as though he’d washed up before Kyuhyun was pushed in. Zhou Mi wore some sort of robe, but his face was haggard like he hadn’t slept in weeks. Kyuhyun had so many questions, so many questions and he knew that if Zhou Mi had sent for him, it wasn’t for Kyuhyun’s curiosity. Maybe the war was over. Maybe Zhou Mi would order him beaten just because.

“Have you eaten?” Zhou Mi asked, when Kyuhyun was pushed down on his knees in front of the low table.

“No,” Kyuhyun said.

Zhou Mi nodded at the man who had brought him, and it was only minutes later that a bowl with a hearty-smelling broth in it and a mound of rice was making his stomach rumble. It mocked him there, sitting in front of him. There was an earthenware mug, too, water.

“Release his arms, and leave us,” Zhou Mi said.

The soldier protested it seemed, and Zhou Mi scowled.

“Does he have a weapon? Can he run me through with a bowl of rice, or shall I talk to him as he laps at his food like a dog?”

The rope was removed from Kyuhyun’s arms. He didn’t want to be seen as weak, but moving his arms back forward took a fair amount of effort, done in stages and trying to school his face as Zhou Mi watched every second. Kyuhyun lifted the water first, drinking half of it and sighing before starting in on the food.

“The healer tells me your burns are healing. That you’ve been docile when he treats you. The soldiers have said you’ve given them no trouble, but that you haven’t spoken at all. No shouting to see me in the middle of the night.”

Kyuhyun gulped at the stew to wash down the mouthful of rice he had taken.

“You know all I know about the war, all I remember anyway. The healer’s helping. If I talk to the guards, maybe they’ll beat me like you said.”

That had an effect, Zhou Mi’s chin rising a little before Kyuhyun went back to his food. Hot and fresh weren’t a priority for the prisoners, so he was not letting it go to waste.

“Only traitors would be beaten, to find out what they know,” Zhou Mi told him.

“I’m not a traitor. I was taken, and tortured,” Kyuhyun said, his shoulder chiming in with a series of sharp throbs. “I only told you the truth.”

“From the future. On the side of the Eastern army. With your strange books, and strange clothes. Dressed like that, you almost could belong here. But how could they have known of you?”

It was rhetorical, Zhou Mi speaking half to himself. If Kyuhyun wasn’t the traitor, then someone was, or was watching very closely.

“What did they think I was telling you? What did they think I know?” Kyuhyun wondered.

“The night of the lightning, there were people who knew you had given me information,” Zhou Mi said.

But he looked more tired even than before, pressing fingers to his forehead as though trying to conjure everyone who had ever known of Kyuhyun’s existence.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Kyuhyun said, when Zhou Mi finally looked back up. He was fiddling with the last grains of rice, and at least he could say it. “I don’t just want the Eastern army to win, I know they do. There is a way I can prove myself to you. Maybe you won’t believe I’m from the future, but you’ll know I’m getting my information from no spy.”

Zhou Mi frowned. “How could you possibly?”

“I told you before. Your poems. Your verses. You can’t test me on the ones you’ve already written, but what about ones you haven’t written? I don’t remember all of them, but I might be able to remember something. If you give me the first line of something you write, I can see if I can remember the rest. It’s not a dream any more.”

“It still feels like one. No. I don’t know. It’s enough to know I can find out who may have spoke of you to others. Soldier!”

Kyuhyun didn’t protest as he was pulled to his feet, didn’t bother looking back. He’d tried. It was the only way he could think of to at least be sure that Zhou Mi didn’t see him as a threat. For his own safety.

***


	4. Part Four

***

It took Zhou Mi days to make his decision. They were not days that were idle, riding out with his men, meeting with the other generals, and a battle they instigated as a test. That had been of his own suggestion, something nagging from what Kuixian had said that when the armies were four, it would begin to escalate. They made it out of that battle with only one dead, and had nudged the sleeping foe to test it. It had worked, from what they saw, a movement in the camps, a rearranging of the guard. It worked to their advantage, that wariness. Eventually they would learn the routines, and maybe that guard would fall, and they would strike. It was not a war won in hours or days.

He’d seen Kuixian once, when he’d been taken to the healer. He walked better, not the hunched stagger he had taken up after his injury. The medicine to dull the pain had been reduced, so that was part of it. But Zhou Mi still was not prepared to talk, and he wasn’t, as another general had suggested, prepared to move the prisoner into one of the other camps. There was a fascination, and Zhou Mi’s rescue of him perhaps enhanced that. It was not as though he was some lucky item he kept in his pocket. Maybe someone he was meant to keep saving. Pulling him out of the dawn battle, rescuing him from his kidnappers.

There was a thread there that he couldn’t ignore, and a question that Kuixian had introduced. If Kuixian was from the future as he had said, he could know of verses that Zhou Mi had not yet written. Perhaps he was a sorcerer, but the clothes, the odd speech, the way he had appeared in the light, Zhou Mi had begun to reject that even if it was in some way the more logical choice.

But when Kuixian was pushed onto his knees in Zhou Mi’s tent, Zhou Mi was prepared to accept any outcome.

“We will test your knowledge of these verses of mine,” Zhou Mi said. And he didn’t know what to think of the eagerness, and something like relief as Kuixian nodded.

“I will do my best.”

Writing was something very personal to him not something that he did on command, but there was a certain logic to Kuixian’s words. If Kuixian could cite a poem he had not written, then there was a likelihood to there being some truth to his words. Some truth of some kind.

“Turn away from me,” Zhou Mi said. “Cover your eyes and your ears.”

It could not have been comfortable to do that, but Kuixian did not protest. Zhou Mi let himself relax, closing his eyes and reaching for his ink and brush. They would see. They would test this theory. He wrote two different short verses, unrelated. If Kuixian knew neither, Zhou Mi didn’t know what he would do. He didn’t know how far to extend himself before it was folly. Five, ten, a dozen. He would feel it out one by one, in case.

“Turn back,” Zhou Mi said, and the paper in front of him was folded, covered, impossible for Kuixian to see. Kuixian had not seen him write, and he’d kept his brush strokes light so that Kuixian could not have heard as well. “The first line, ‘The mountain cries.’”

The look on Kyuhyun’s face was close to pain as he thought hard. It was the face of someone trying to remember something, not as though he was waiting for a bolt of knowledge from the sky.

“I recognize that, but… It was from the battle section. I wish I’d read it a dozen more times now. The mountain cries… That was the one talking about trust? Maybe? Something about believing in people. That’s very apt, considering you’re not sure you can believe me. But I don’t remember it exactly,” Kuixian said, his shoulders slumping. There was worry there, too, in the dark eyes. It was a risk they both were taking.

A clever guess, again, perhaps.

“I have another,” Zhou Mi said. “‘The wind rises.’”

At that, Kuixian’s eyes brightened. “Oh. Oh, I know that one better. This isn’t going to be exact, but… The wind rises, and…holds the tents down. The birds are crying, letting go and going home. When the scholars do their analysis of that, they say that you were making a metaphor or something, wishing you could be like the birds and take up the ropes of the tents and end the war and fly home also.”

Zhou Mi did not have to open the paper in front of him to read the words he’d just written. But the two verses there were written precisely:

_The mountain cries  
Waiting for one day, one breath  
People lie  
But is there truth in trust._

-

_The wind rises,  
The ropes hold the battle tents secure,  
The birds cry,  
And they free themselves toward home._

For Kyuhyun to have guessed the first would have been lucky. The second, he had twisted, to make it more difficult for Kyuhyun to follow his train of thought. He half wanted to look behind himself to see if someone had been watching over his shoulder. But Kyuhyun hadn’t been looking to anyone, just at him.

“And you know these poems?”

“There are a few different collections of what you wrote, but there’s one book people mainly read, titled after the war. The Thirteen Armies. There are daily life poems, and poems about battle, and about loss, and love. The battle ones I know pretty well because they always have us read that section when we’re learning about the war in school. War is terrible, but I always thought it was really cool, to be able to see some of his - your! - thoughts, and feelings in this war from so long ago.”

The words made sense. But beyond that, it could have been a nice story, an inflation of his ego maybe. It was still too much to be a lucky guess, his writings. He’d heard of men or women who woke with powers. A seer, or a shaman. No matter what, or how, it didn’t mean he could set Kyuhyun free. He’d satisfied some of his curiosity, but even the part he’d settled only opened more questions.

“People read what I wrote. But I do not even share these myself.”

“That would be strange, I guess. Maybe you never share them yourself? Maybe your descendants do, when you pass on your belongings. We don’t really know how they came to be, just that they showed up after the battles and you were documented as one of the generals. One of the youngest generals, maybe?”

It rankled as much as the first time. Yes, by a decade or two he was younger than most of the generals.

“You told me that once before. Did your…records not speak of my age?”

“Yeah, I mean.” Kyuhyun paused. “It gave a year you were born and the years the wars happened, but when I think war general, I think some grizzled old man. Based on the dates, you’re not much older than me right now.”

There was a reason that he was where he was, but he was not going to share it with a stranger. He felt oddly annoyed, as though Kuixian was questioning his place, even though he knew that hadn’t been what Kuixian had been saying at all.

“Despite that, I am here,” Zhou Mi said, standing. “Soldier! Take him back.”

The man standing watch outside of the tent came in and tugged Kyuhyun onto his feet.

“Wait. Do you believe me?” Kuixian asked. “I promise—“

His next words were lost as he was led away, and Zhou Mi stared down at the words he’d written. He was getting closer to believing, was perhaps his worry. Kuixian had given Zhou Mi a good way of testing him. But he wondered how many it would take before he looked to Kyuhyun’s face and saw truth, instead of danger.

***

Kyuhyun began to understand what a dog felt like, tied away from the action but unable to join in. It wasn’t that he wanted to drill with the soldiers, or carry endless supplies of wood for the signal fires, but it was definitely a loneliness being held apart. He was for a reason. Even if Zhou Mi believed him, and his newer freedom indicated at least that Zhou Mi did somewhat, he still wasn’t all the way safe. Zhou Mi barely looked at him, rarely talked to him. He wondered if it was kind of like Zhou Mi was fighting himself on believing. Kyuhyun probably would’ve been too, and Zhou Mi had more important things to be thinking about, really. It wasn’t some pleasure cruise for Kyuhyun. He was grateful he got meals every day, plenty of water, and a better smelling cell. And he was definitely grateful to be let out in the times where there were soldiers enough to keep an eye on him.

So he wasn’t getting hugs from his mom, but at least he could sit by the creek and contemplate life. Even if it made him feel like an old man, sighing and rolling his injured shoulder. It still stung a bit but at least it hadn’t been over the joint. Every so often he took a little of the salve from the jar the healer had left him and rubbed it against his skin. He stretched a little, rotating his shoulder and feeling the tug of the scarring. The blisters had scabbed, and that was mostly gone. The worst of the burns, he couldn’t feel anything, and the rest of the skin was tender. But he’d learned to keep it wrapped, because the movement of the cloth against his skin was unbearable.

Kyuhyun stuck his fingers into the water, wiggling them. He rubbed against the edge of the bank, idly staring into the distance. All he saw were hills, trees, mountains. It was so weird, like being in the middle of some nature movie. He glanced down, rubbing a piece of dirt between his fingers to make it dissolve in the water. It did, but slowly, thick between his fingers.

“Oh,” he murmured, digging out a bigger chunk. Not dirt. Clay. Of course they’d had art classes in school, making a few ugly, lumpy vases and pots. But they’d had an outing once, to old houses. They’d all gotten filthy that day, his whole class. Big tarps spread out, lumps of clay, water, straw.

Kyuhyun could still hear his teacher. “This is how they made brick for foundations, and walls. The grass is like rebar, holding the clay, reinforcing it.”

It couldn’t be too wet. Some of the boys made their clay too wet on purpose, ending up with some disgusting straw soup. Bricks couldn’t be fired without a kiln, but something like that, with that reinforcement, it could stand the test of time. Not only could it, but it had. It had.

Kyuhyun splashed across the stream, waving back at a grunt of warning from his watchful guard. He snatched at the dry grasses until his hands were getting sore, hauling it back across. He didn’t have a tarp, or anything waterproof for that matter, but he would have to make do. He pulled up chunks of clay first, making a pile not far from the edge of the stream. When he had enough that he thought was the size of a brick, he used his hands to cup water, wetting it, working it. It had been so long ago he hardly remembered what it had felt like, what the consistency of the clay had been. He didn’t even know if what he was working with was pure enough to hold together. He didn’t have anything to lose. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. The watchman wandered by on his round, but left Kyuhyun alone. Apparently he was going to be allowed to play with dirt. He almost giggled to himself, laying the grass across the clay and beginning to fold it in, working it, making it and the clay one. 

He didn’t know how much was right of that, either, but he figured he’d try a few different ways. If one crumbled, he’d try again. He made little beds of grass for the bricks up away from the bank, so they didn’t just become one with the ground underneath of them, molding them into crude but flat rectangles. More clay, more grass. His fingers stung and his hands ached, and he was sweating, but when he was finally satisfied, he had four bricks done. The second one he’d put less water in, and the last two had a smaller amount of grass. But they looked like what he remembered, when he was ten and smeared with dirt.

He was still trying to wash his hands clean of the clay when he heard footsteps. It wasn’t his guard, but Zhou Mi, crouching to nudge at one of the bricks with his finger.

“I was told you were doing something strange,” Zhou Mi said.

“It’s clay formed into a brick,” Kyuhyun said. “It should dry in the sun, and get hard, and then it can be used for things like building, or cooking. Or maybe leveling your table.”

Zhou Mi just considered him in silence, like he was judging him, and Kyuhyun just shrugged. “I wanted to see if I could do it. I was taught as a child once, but I didn’t remember how much work it was.”

“Things that are worthwhile almost always are,” Zhou Mi said. “It is almost time to eat.”

It was a suggestion, to go back to his cell.

Kyuhyun checked on the bricks like they were his children. They dried in the sun, and Kyuhyun made more, having little else to do with his afternoon and there was a certain kind of satisfaction in it. His charges grew from four, to eight, to twelve, to sixteen, and with the exception of one that someone had stepped on - intentionally or not, they were in good shape. The lesser the water amount worked the best, because his first brick had been crumbly. Zhou Mi wandered by at least once to nudge at the bricks drying or stacked. He supposed if he had to use one to bludgeon someone he could have, if Zhou Mi was worried he was making some kind of weapon. Mostly he was just tiring himself out so he wasn’t in his own head all the time with all the what-ifs. 

Though at the rate he was going, if he had to make a house, he’d have it done in another year or so. At least if he wanted enough room to stretch out in or to stand in. A roof was something else entirely. Probably the easiest was just building one wall a little taller and then angling things down from there, he thought. Though, that depended how big it was again. He didn’t have anything to cut with, a knife, a hatchet. If Kyuhyun was still there and Zhou Mi kept his word at the end of the war, then maybe he’d supply Kyuhyun with a few essentials. He didn’t particularly want to stay with the soldiers, but if there were some going back toward civilization - as much as there was anyway - maybe he’d go back that way, too. He had too much city in him most likely to stay out on his own. There had to be animals to snare, but people would make things a lot easier. At least he could try to find someone to work for, a steady source of food. That was the same as his old life in a way. If he’d realized he was going to get hauled into the past, he’d have packed a bit more appropriately than some candy and a book.

He laughed at himself, though, because it was such a turnaround from what he was used to. Before, it was which restaurant to go to eat at. Instead, he figuring out just basic survival.

***

Kyuhyun was summoned, and he knew it the moment that the guard had grunted at him and gestured for him to stand. To be let into Zhou Mi’s tent wasn’t a surprise. Little had changed, with the progress of the war. Kyuhyun had changed, his pants getting looser, but that hadn’t really been a goal. Seeing Zhou Mi with all the items Kyuhyun had arrived with spread out in front of him like some kind of memory game, that he didn’t really expect. And yet, he knelt near Zhou Mi’s table and waited for Zhou Mi to decide what to tell him.

“Tell me about the purpose of these items.”

Kyuhyun nodded, considering how to go about it. He could start at one end, or just start with the least strange item and go from there.

“This is a face mask,” Kyuhyun said, rescuing it away from Zhou MI who was trying to hold it something like a basket. “People wear it if they’re sick, or maybe if they don’t like how their skin is that day, or don’t feel like dressing up.”

Kyuhyun slipped it up over his ears, adjusting it over his nose and mouth and trying not to look like a total wild man as he struck a bit of a pose.

Of course that deflated a little as Zhou Mi blinked at him, his face more or less unchanged.

“So yeah, it’s pretty nice. I wear one when I travel even if I’m not sick sometimes. They say it doesn’t help, but…” Kyuhyun shrugged, and set the mask aside. He picked up the candy, which had been opened for who knew how long from the petrified way it looked inside. “This is just food. They package it up so you can carry it around, but this isn’t good to eat any more.”

If he ended up staying to the point where he felt it was long term, that was something he was going to have to burn. No one was going to dig up 300 year old plastic, or however long it would last, if he had anything to say about it

“And this?” Zhou Mi asked, pointing to the ink pen once the candy was set aside.

“That’s a pen. It’s— You probably do most of your writing with a brush, or maybe charcoal or something? This is like that, only the ink is inside of it. Here,” Kyuhyun said. He flipped to the back of the tour book where there was a place for notes. “You hold it it like you would a brush, more or less. And then you just press, and move.”

He wrote his own name, not that Zhou Mi could read it, and Zhou Mi considered it, lifting the pen and rolling it between his fingers as though testing it for weight. He gripped it, much as Kyuhyun had, and pressed, concentrating with each line. It wasn’t perfect, but the name he’d written was readable.

“Too bad I don’t have anyone to tell I just got my book autographed by the great general Zhou Mi,” Kyuhyun said.

The snort was soft but audible as Zhou Mi turned the pen around and set it and the book aside as well. He picked up Kyuhyun’s wallet, and Kyuhyun accepted it.

“This holds my identification, and my money. This paper is money. These cards are…” And again, Kyuhyun’s mind went blank. “If you show them, it’s the promise of money.”

That seemed to stymy Zhou Mi a little as he turned over the money. He had some won and some yuan as well, but Kyuhyun didn’t really know what to do to take the perplexed look off of Zhou Mi’s face. Another thing he’d have to burn. Driver’s licenses weren’t really required with horses. And Kyuhyun’s mouth opened before he could think better of it. Maybe if Zhou Mi was in a curious mood, he’d be willing to indulge Kyuhyun as well.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Zhou Mi waited a moment, but he nodded.

“How did you come to be here?”

Here, the battle, as a general. Any of it.

“My father,” Zhou Mi said. “I was his only son, and I could nearly hold a sword before I could walk. Thinking back, it’s lucky I have both my eyes.”

Zhou Mi chuckled a little, as did Kyuhyun. And Zhou Mi’s head tilted, considering him.

“What do you make your living at?” Zhou MI asked. “In… The place you are from.”

Not the time, but Kyuhyun would take it. At least it let him know that Zhou Mi thought of him as somewhat an other.

“I work on these really complicated machines that you wouldn’t even— This black thing from my bag? That holds hundreds and hundreds of books. I work on things that store other things. Images. Paintings. Books. Music. I could play you a song right now.”

Zhou Mi eyed the phone with skepticism. “You can play a song? Is it an instrument?”

“Not exactly, and yes, any song. Well, if you have a connection, any song. I don’t know how to explain… It probably seems a little like magic. If my battery still works, maybe…”

He thought it was dead, at first, until the logo came on the screen. He’d turned it off, the morning he’d left, because he’d been charging it. It was still at 60% battery, which wasn’t bad. The screen flashed on, and he stopped, wondering what he should go to first. The camera icon got a swift tap, and Kyuhyun turned a little, leaning back.

“Hey, look up at my hand and smile.”

“But…?”

The second Kyuhyun saw a tentative smile, he snapped the picture, and he turned back around, offering it for Zhou Mi to see. Zhou Mi stared at the screen, looking up where Kyuhyun’s hand had been in the air, and back at the phone. He’d wanted them both to be in the picture, because Kyuhyun was something tangible that Zhou Mi could see.

“Here’s something else it can do,” Kyuhyun said, opening up his music app. It took only a few seconds before a song was being played from the little speakers. And Kyuhyun hissed, a snap between their hands as he handed the phone to Zhou Mi.

“I can feel it,” Zhou Mi marveled as the music played. “How does it do that?”

It felt like he’d made the damn thing himself.

“It’s something that’s saved inside it, and then played through these little speakers. I don’t… I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“And this is your language?”

“Oh yeah, but I have others!” Zhou Mi retained possession of the phone, but Kyuhyun swiped and skimmed, picking out a song he knew was in Mandarin. He kicked himself for not just starting with that. Zhou Mi’s head tilted, listening intently, and his eyes widening as he realized maybe that he could understand part of it. He watched Zhou Mi’s face intently, the way his lips parted, the thoughtful look in his eyes. He almost got caught looking too, when Zhou Mi looked up suddenly.

“Can you understand it?” Zhou Mi asked.

“No,” he said, before considering maybe Zhou Mi was trying to trap him in a lie. “I have a translation of it, here.”

It took a swipe, revealing the lines of lyrics.

“This is your language, too?”

“Yeah,” Kyuhyun said. Just seeing it gave Kyuhyun a bit of calm. At least that was familiar to him.

“It can do so many things.”

“The only thing it can’t do just about is make your breakfast and sweep your floors,” Kyuhyun said, and Zhou Mi laughed. “Though, if you had the right stuff, it could probably tell other things like it to do those. And start your car, and all kinds of stuff.”

“Car?”

“Oh. A…mechanical horse. Or, a cart I guess.”

“A mechanical horse.”

Zhou Mi looked like he was right on the verge of telling Kyuhyun he was a giant liar, but then he looked down at the phone still playing music in his hands.

“So many things.”

“Did you want to try taking a picture?” Kyuhyun asked. It was easy to get overwhelmed, but that at least he could do. With the music still playing, he switched it over to the camera, and Zhou Mi watched what was beyond it waggle with fascination. “Here, you point at what you want to see, and tap here on this red button.”

Zhou Mi turned, looking behind him out the opening of the tent to the mountain beyond. It wasn’t even, but Zhou Mi pointed the phone in the right direction, and tapped just as Kyuhyun told him.

When he turned around, Kyuhyun pulled up the picture. And there, in the tent, was a small depiction of the mountain itself, even though it was pointed at the table again. Zhou Mi lifted it, turning it around, frowning at it.

“You can zoom in, too,” Kyuhyun said. He moved his fingers against the screen and the mountain got larger, exposing more details as Zhou Mi’s eyes got bigger, too. “Just move your fingers out or in, yeah, like that. And move by pressing and—“

Zhou Mi caught on quickly. He pressed too hard, but the phone responded, moving the picture for him, making it bigger and smaller. He swiped his finger and startled as it went to the picture that Kyuhyun had taken of them. Zhou Mi looked to Kyuhyun’s face and back again.

“That is magic,” he said.

“Just don’t go inventing a camera way before they’re supposed to be,” Kyuhyun joked.

Though, it was half not a joke, too. Maybe he’d go back to his own time, and they’d all be wearing space suits and sipping protein drinks because he got Zhou Mi off to a running start. Though knowing something was possible and knowing how to make it were two different things. Plus then it was plausible he wouldn’t exist any more either.

A voice from outside had Zhou Mi looking up and handing the phone back to Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun silenced the music, and Zhou Mi called for whoever it was to enter. Even if Kyuhyun couldn’t understand half of the exchange, he put the phone back on the table with resignation and prepared to stand.

“Take him back to his cell,” Zhou Mi told the soldier.

Kyuhyun wanted to get more of Zhou Mi’s thoughts, see more of that amazement. He didn’t know how it would be to try and understand all the things he’d been talking about, but he wanted to hear Zhou Mi’s questions. Maybe because it was more fascinating than making bricks, or staring at the inside of his little cage. Maybe to a lot of things.

***

Zhou Mi woke to the sound of a strange humming, like the distant drone of bees that rose and waned. He blinked up and thought for a moment the sun was shining through the ceiling of a house, only, it looked solid. The walls were gray and cool, and stone, and he could see through hazy clear material outside. Across from him, Kuixian was tense, his hands tight on his thighs. It was not any place like Zhou Mi had seen, and he followed Kuixian’s line of sight.

He blinked, and blinked again. And he rose, touching the dark wood on the wall, and the writing seared into it. His words, his verse, and his name.

“I feel like I’m going to wake up. This is a dream, isn’t it?” Kuixian asked. “But we’re here. You’re here.”

“What is this place?”

Kuixian gestured wildly around them.

“It’s the shrine. Oh. The shrine from the book! For the Battle of Thirteen Armies, see? This is where I was, before I fell into the battle. I was just where you were, looking at the plaque, and then trying not to get run through. And hey, this shrine. Look, it still has the same brick foundation,” Kuixian said. “Kind of, anyway. It’s concrete on the outside, but they left the brick on display in here. I don’t know when it was built originally, but… I guess they are a little like my bricks.”

“Or maybe they are,” Zhou Mi mused. “You were there, after all.”

Kuixian paused, considering it, looking at the building as a whole. He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe they replaced it, if it was built right after the war After all, the structure has been rebuilt several times.”

“Then this… This is the future you spoke of.”

“Yes. Yes, come see.”

Kuixian took his arm and pulled him out, and they passed through the clear haze that Kuixian called “plastic” and stood on a path made of stone. And the buzzing was more intense as just in front of them there were people speeding by.

“Cars. Mechanical horses, like I told you,” Kuixian said, and Zhou Mi was mystified, looking around at all the stone, all the gleam and colors. “It’s kind of hard to take glass windows and metal cars for granted, but I know I do. I wish I could feed you here. You’d be amazed, though it’s probably a shock.”

And then Kuixian laughed at himself. “Right, the food would be a shock. We just were with horses and tents, there’s this.”

Cars. Glass. Zhou Mi fondled the plastic they’d come through before Kuixian was tugging him along further. There was music loudly coming out of an open door, people selling items, talking high and fast, and strange even to his ears.

“Can you understand them?” Zhou Mi asked.

“No,” Kuixian said. “Hey, can you see me?”

Zhou Mi gawked as Kuixian stepped in front of a woman who passed right through him.

“If this is a dream, why does gravity work? Why can’t we just fly?”

“No wings,” Zhou Mi said. “You go by so fast in these…cars, but only birds fly.”

The look on Kuixian’s face was so peculiar.

“So, about that. I wonder if we can go on an elevator here.”

“A what?”

Half of what Kuixian pointed out Zhou Mi didn’t understand, and they were going so quickly, Kuixian pulling him along in fear they would wake up before he got where he wanted Zhou Mi to go. They walked into the entrance of a large building with ceilings so high that Zhou Mi almost tipped over trying to see them until Kuixian guided him forward. There were people all around, not even reacting to them as they got in something Kuixian called an elevator, standing near the sliding entrance to it. It rumbled under their feet as his stomach swooped and he held tight to Kuixian’s arm.

“We don’t even have to pay,” Kuixian said, and he smiled reassuringly, tugging Zhou Mi with him. “Come and see.”

It was more of the glass, stretching out and around them, windows from floor to ceiling looking out over the city. Not just a village, but bigger even than the imperial city. There was building after building, stretched so far, dizzying lights and frames so far below them.

“Over here,” Kuixian said, and his hand closed around Zhou Mi’s, and pulled him to another incredible view.

“It’s impossible,” Zhou Mi said. He almost staggered, dazed, incredulous that any city could be so large, have so many people, and them so high above it. The people looked like ants down below them, the cars buzzing along. Everything was so bright, so loud, so quick.

“It must seem like it,” Kuixian said. “Obviously I’ve had all my life to get used to it. This is normal. Where the battle is, that’s… That’s unusual. Quiet places.”

“Oh look, the mountain!”

And lights and buildings stretching almost to the foothills almost. The mountain he greeted every day, wanting to ride toward it, to free himself from the chains of battle.

“It’s hard to explain. People have expanded. Where there was nothing, there’s this. People living, dying, being born. They pass by that shrine and a lot of people don’t even think about it,” Kuixian murmured. “That the battle you’re fighting means they live here peacefully. More or less peacefully, over the years anyway.”

“I don’t even know how to think,” Zhou Mi said. “How could you explain it? I couldn’t have… Not even in my strangest dreams, could I have conjured this. And it’s just as you said.”

“I told you, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Zhou Mi looked to Kuixian, his clothes so different to those around them. But the clothes Kuixian had been in, he saw reflected all around them. So many different types. Young, old, laughter, smiling faces.

It was not a lie, but it was a dream. A dream he woke from after he had studied Kuixian’s profile and weighed his words, and words were trapped on his lips. Zhou Mi woke to the ceiling of his tent, and the sound of a horse snorting, and the faint ringing in his ears as though getting used to the absence of sound. He flexed his hand and paged through the book again, Kuixian’s book, and he saw words that echoed his experience, but no pictures that would have made him imagine it.

He went to Kuixian, who sat near his cell with his breakfast, and looked up at him with wide eyes.

“I don’t know that I like elevators,” Zhou Mi said, and watched. The relief as Kuixian relaxed told him so many things.

“You’d get used to him,” Kuixian promised. “There are ones completely enclosed in glass, so you can see yourself rising off the earth.”

Kuixian laughed at his back as Zhou Mi shook his head and started to walk away.

“Hey, you saw it, too, though? Can we talk…?”

“Another time,” Zhou Mi said, and left Kuixian there.

He felt… Unsettled, perhaps. It was as though he had woken up in some realm he thought only true in tales, and discovered it was real. Kuixian and his verses, the items he’d brought, the dreams they’d shared. He’d been so reluctant to believe, to think anything like it could be true. It was easier to believe Kuixian could do some sort of magic, or was some type of shaman. Or maybe even a traitor. Zhou Mi watched his soldiers drill, and searched himself for the last bit of doubt. He wondered if he was a fool, that he found none, if Kuixian had won some sort of battle of his own.

***

Kyuhyun again felt like Zhou Mi was ignoring him. Oh, sure, he wandered by every so often in his inspections, but when he would meet Kyuhyun’s eyes, there was no invitation even if Kyuhyun was trying to make him offer one. Which was fine. He just played with his clay for a bit every day, and pouted in his cell when Zhou Mi wouldn’t talk to him. Sure, he knew it was hard to take it. Elevators, and high rises, cars. It was huge, and he just wanted a chance to explain. Though, maybe Zhou Mi didn’t need explanation. Maybe he’d taken it all in, and—

He could come up with possibilities all day.

But when soldiers almost pulled him from his lunch but for a few quick swallows, Kyuhyun knew something was up. Zhou Mi wasn’t in armor so much as in a longish type of coat, and he turned, looking Kyuhyun over.

“Can you ride a horse?”

Kyuhyun blinked. “It’s been a few years, but…yeah?”

“Good. Then you won’t have to be looked after while we’re gone.”

Zhou Mi gestured, and a horse was brought forward. One of the soldiers all but threw him up on it, and he took a bit getting used to the unfamiliar saddle, the reins, with the horse shifting a bit nervously under him.

“What—“ Kyuhyun started, but Zhou Mi was mounting his own horse, and ten more men on horseback were riding up. So, it wasn’t some pleasure ride, then.

“I thought you were going to warn me not to try and escape,” Kyuhyun said. Zhou Mi looked askance at him, and Kyuhyun’s mouth firmed for a moment. “Okay, I guess that would mean you thought I could escape to begin with.”

He thought maybe, just maybe, he heard a chuckle as Zhou Mi urged his horse forward. It took Kyuhyun a second, but he got his horse moving as well. A couple of soldiers trotted by him and there he was, smack in the middle of a group of soldiers who couldn’t understand a word he said.

“You understand me, though, don’t you?” Kyuhyun asked, patting at the horse’s neck.

An ear flicked back at him, but the horse was just as impressed it seemed. It gave him the chance to see the scenery, he guessed. Not that fields and trees were all that fascinating, but it was nice to be away from the stink of humanity and animals. He could tell they were climbing, trees getting a little sparser as they rode up the highest vantage point that Kyuhyun knew of behind the army’s line. He wasn’t sure if he rode the horse, or if the horse was taking him where he needed, but he didn’t fight as she picked her way, and carried him through some rocky terrain. He wanted to ask what they were doing, besides scouting which was obvious, or where they were going. How long they’d be, why Zhou Mi had taken him along. He had more questions than fingers, and not even getting smacked in the face with a tree branch - and getting laughed at by the soldier nearest him - was answering those questions.

Not moving was a relief, as was the realization that he had water and food in a pack behind his saddle. Obviously he hadn’t expected to be starved, but it gave him a little bit of control as they all sat and had a moment enjoying not having to be in motion. The biggest relief was that he was allowed to creep forward and sit near Zhou Mi. A soldier tried to hold him off, but a slight incline of Zhou Mi’s head had them backing off and letting Kyuhyun sit. It was a little like trying to get near the popular kid at lunch time or something. But Kyuhyun’s main objective was to sit near someone he could understand. Plus, those questions.

“Is this mostly for scouting?” Kyuhyun asked. He’d waited a good three minutes after sitting down, giving Zhou Mi time to get through the bulk of the food he’d pulled out. He knew Zhou Mi wasn’t exactly free to relax and just eat for unlimited amounts of time, so he didn’t want to make his life harder somehow doing that.

“Getting a different viewpoint, mostly, and just getting out to see. It’s not good to stay in one place too long. We can see movement, if the water levels have changed.”

Zhou Mi shrugged a shoulder, taking another bite of food.

“I’m kind of surprised the others haven’t blocked off your water, or diverted it or something,” Kyuhyun said, wiggling his water skin. He didn’t know if the stream he’d been near was running toward them from the enemy camps or not. “Or maybe they have, I don’t know.”

Zhou Mi looked at him, his head tilting. “Is that what you would do? Why would you think to do that?”

“I play these…” And how to describe video games? “Pretend battles, I guess. Games. So we learn a bit about strategy. Enough guys, they could try and divert it, or really seriously dam it up. Get some logs, haul in some stone or dirt. Of course, they’d have to be far enough away to not cause a lake in their own camp. I guess they could put something in the water, too.”

Zhou Mi nodded. “We take precautions. We do have scouts that go up the stream to check for blockages, but we can’t go to its source.”

The precautions were wells, Kyuhyun knew that by then. But Zhou Mi wasn’t going to tell him everything.

“Probably somewhere in the mountains, yeah? Have you thought about doing that to them?”

“We’re always looking at that. The water that is nearest them, it’s not so easy to attack. Extending ourselves to do that would cause more problems than help.”

“Too bad you can’t dye all their water red or something. That would really freak them out.”

Zhou Mi laughed, a sound so surprising and natural that Kyuhyun’s head ducked for a moment.

“I wonder if that would truly send them into retreat,” Zhou Mi said.

“One could hope. We could blast music at them, but I don’t think my phone would do very much good.”

“Your…phone? Is that the box from your bag?”

Kyuhyun blinked. How easy it was to forget. He didn’t remember if he’d told Zhou Mi what it was called. “Oh. Yeah.”

Zhou Mi nodded. “Yes, that would not reach far.”

Might confuse a few people, though.

It was a brief reprieve, though, as soldiers began preparing to leave and Zhou Mi himself swung up on his horse. He waved Kyuhyun along though, out to a rocky outcropping. Kyuhyun walked up beside Zhou Mi, and though his vantage point was lower, he could see most of what Zhou Mi did.

Looking out over the hills, they could see the winding of streams and rivers. The mark of men was there, below them a hilly meadow clearly filled with tents, and the stream nearby. That was the camp that they had come from, down over the rocks. In the distance, there was the trail of smoke in the air. It was too far, with them in the tree line, for anyone to be able to see them.

He looked up to see Zhou Mi scanning from horizon to horizon and back again.

“Have they—“ Kyuhyun started, and stopped himself before shrugging and going on. “Are they moving?”

“I don’t see that they’ve spread, or moved closer,” Zhou Mi said. “But it’s easy to set up tents, and keep fires lit, and that’s why we are continually scouting the forest. The lack of movement makes me…uneasy.”

“Watching an animal still before they pounce.”

“Exactly that,” Zhou Mi said. “To win, to repel what I know will be coming, the losses will be great.”

If Zhou Mi minded the hand that Kyuhyun placed just above his knee in support, he didn’t show it.

“It’s good to keep an eye on the higher ground. That way they can’t overtake you. Will we go back another way?”

“Yes. We’ll find our way down the back of this hill. A good vantage point, and to be sure we see no changes. You must be very good at the games you play.”

Even if the things he said were the things that Zhou Mi knew, at least maybe he validated Zhou Mi’s decisions in some way. It had to be a difficult thing, to have the lives of men on his shoulders. The stress of it, he would have needed an outlet. Getting away from the grind of camp, though, was a relief itself, at least for Kyuhyun. He knew the reason that Zhou Mi had given for taking him along, but Kyuhyun still wondered. Not leaving Kyuhyun behind to be looked after was one thing.

“We ride lower until we still have vantage on topmost fire,” Zhou Mi said.

Kyuhyun moved away, taking back his hand and walking back up so that Zhou Mi could turn his horse. He was proud of himself, when he found a fallen log and mounted the horse himself. Again, he was in the middle of the line of soldiers, with a scout and Zhou Mi at the lead. Zhou Mi looked right on a horse, sitting very straight, the length of his legs, the strength of his jaw making him look very official. No painting would have done him justice, which he didn’t even know if any had survived. The most important part was that he was there, and that Zhou Mi and his trust only went so far. But as he looked back over his shoulder at the distant smoke, he wondered how Zhou Mi trusted him at all despite all that had happened.

The hours of riding had compounded by the time that they had reached the place that Zhou Mi felt comfortable enough to call their camp. Kyuhyun could feel the soreness well before he made his way to dismount, but as he tried to stretch out, hobbling and trying to shake out his legs, he realized he had an audience. He sniffed, seeing both the soldiers and Zhou Mi chuckling.

“Glad to give you all something to laugh at,” he muttered.

He got the saddle off the horse he had ridden, a soldier stepping in to help at the last and take his horse off so that it could crop at the dry, short grasses. Kyuhyun was careful, letting himself be directed and staying near as wood was gathered, a fire started. He had his own little pouch of food, but he knew they would make both tea and likely some rice. His stomach was grumbling just thinking about it.

Zhou Mi stayed up, talking to the men. And though Kyuhyun could hear at least Zhou Mi’s side of the conversation, it wasn’t very stimulating. Some talk of war, others just talk of home. It wasn’t conversation meant for him, and besides the talk earlier, they had exchanged only a brief few words. With the fire nearby and his blanket warming him, and the ground he’d picked for himself at least mostly flat, he dozed to the sound of Zhou Mi talking, and the wind ruffling his hair.

***

Zhou Mi wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Validation, maybe. He could have left Kuixian behind, confined to his cell. It would have been minimal work, and it was safe. He saw the soldiers and their glances, wondering. Whatever gossip made the rounds, he wasn’t concerned by it. Whether they thought Kuixian was a shaman or not, or some sort of advisor, they would have only been in disbelief by the truth. Buildings so many more times taller than trees, mechanical contraptions that seemed almost to skim the earth. All around him, conversations of people absorbing something so utterly normal to them, talking to each other in a way he understood. No, taking Kuixian along had half been to assure himself that Kuixian himself was real, to hear his strange insights, to be amazed by his forward thinking. But partly also, it was for safety. Neither of them had forgotten Kuixian being taken, and though Kuixian’s burns were healing and almost always covered by cloth, Zhou Mi could glance at Kuixian’s back and see where they were, exactly. He could still feel echoes of Kuixian’s pain, and that was something he didn’t understand either. Kuixian was not a soldier, just a man.

A man whose hair was getting to be in need of tying back, who spoke with earnestness, who laughed at, with him.

He argued to himself that he also had something to learn to keep Kuixian close, that perhaps in Kuixian there was a secret. And there was undoubtedly an answer.

***

The confinement of camp was not a welcome one once they had returned. It wasn’t like he’d been truly free, amidst all the soldiers, but they’d been moving and seeing things Kyuhyun hadn’t seen before. There’d been a sense of accomplishment in that, little goals. Making it to their camp, staying on his horse. He hadn’t fallen off, and that was a point of pride, even though the saddle had left something to be desired. But all he was left with after was trying to stay out of the sun, and walking back and forth to the stream. He’d lost interest in making bricks, and they were stacked, looking less than uniform, but still there at least. But there was a tension, one that had Kyuhyun watching carefully as supplies were moved. Zhou Mi rode by several days in a row but did not stop, and Kyuhyun wondered.

On the fourth day, Zhou Mi was not on his horse and he paused, waited for Kyuhyun to pop up, to follow him to a space beside the stream.

Kyuhyun eyed the sticks in Zhou Mi’s hands. He didn’t think he’d done anything to call for a beating, but he was staying quiet because he didn’t want to give Zhou Mi any ideas.

“Do the war games you play teach you to fight?” Zhou Mi asked.

Considering they were all virtual, not so much. Though he could imagine someone standing in their living room with a sword making sounds and accidentally stabbing their TV. 

“Not really. They’re more… theoretical,” he said. Not exactly what he was going for, but trying to explain those kinds of things wasn’t exactly something he was prepared for.

Zhou Mi considered him for a moment, before holding out one of the sticks toward him.

“There’s a chance you’ll never be called on to defend yourself,” Zhou Mi said. Considering he was surrounded by soldiers, he hoped that was true. “But it would not hurt you to learn how to defend.”

Kyuhyun looked around him, like someone was going to rush at him from somewhere with a sword drawn for daring to attack their general.

“Did you tell them this was okay?” Kyuhyun asked. He tried to keep his voice mild, and wanted to scowl when Zhou Mi all but smirked at him.

“I wouldn’t have to. If you got a stick like that, it would only be because I let you.”

Okay, fair point. The stick was kind of glorified anyway. The worst damage it could probably do was if it got in an eye or maybe gave someone a splinter. It wiggled a bit in the air, mostly as ineffectual as he supposed his technique was going to be.

Zhou Mi’s fingers were curled around his own stick, urging Kyuhyun to match his position. There was the soft tap of wood against wood, and Kyuhyun was so intent on not being knocked over or not getting his head pretend cut off, that he didn’t get the double entendre of what they were doing for several minutes. And then he had to struggle not to guffaw, because no, that was not something he was explaining to Zhou Mi, no way.

Zhou Mi’s stick snapped none too delicately against his arm and Kyuhyun stared at it, with his own stick ineffectually ahead of him.

“Am I dead?” he asked, wiggling his arm.

“Maybe not quite. Now you are,” Zhou Mi said, poking him in the stomach.

Zhou Mi was completely unfazed by the glare, looking instead rather pleased. It seemed liked it was game, actually, like how many ways he could kill Kyuhyun.

“Admit that you just want to give me a bunch of bruises,” Kyuhyun said.

“I wouldn’t if you tried harder,” Zhou Mi taunted. He jabbed out, and Kyuhyun clutched the “wound”, sinking dramatically to the ground. It got him a grin, and a laugh, and an offered hand to help him stand. That was an attack itself, that grin, coming out of nowhere in the midst of the impromptu session.

His squawk of outrage as Zhou Mi took off his “arm” for the third time straight had Zhou Mi shaking his head.

“Up. Up! Don’t hold it like you’re afraid of it. It’s not a snake, it’s part of you. Someone is coming after your family. Protect yourself!”

Easy for Zhou Mi to say. He wasn’t the one who had a sweaty general being all intense at him making him cede ground until he could feel the slope of the stream behind him. His eyes flickered, watching, parrying, trying not to give. And when he saw his opening, he lunged with his stick like a fencer’s foil, the tip bending against Zhou Mi’s chest. And though Zhou Mi’s eyes widened, his own stick was laid up against Kyuhyun’s neck.

“That wouldn’t have been a great success,” Kyuhyun half wheezed, laughing.

“It depends on if you’d have killed your target before the blow to you was finished. Sometimes a risk is necessary,” Zhou Mi said.

He was being praised, albeit faintly, and he’d have sworn Zhou Mi’s lips twitched.

“The stick is light, so there’s that. You killed me about fifteen times over, so I will only have hope if I have to protect myself that whoever it is is less skilled. Years of practice paid off.”

He definitely didn’t want Zhou Mi going after him with a real sword. He’d be hacked up like a chicken dinner before he could get an arm up. And at least Zhou Mi hadn’t shoved him in the water.

Zhou Mi had told him to protect himself, protect his family.

“Do you have family? A wife?” Kyuhyun asked. He didn’t think that was recorded in history, but there were poems in the collection that seemed to have a romantic twist to them. He remembered groaning in middle school having to analyze some of them.

“I do not. Some soldiers have wives that visit the camp, though it is often not allowed. There are women that follow the camp, as well, but to send them away would cause a lot of anger.”

Prostitutes, he was inferring from that.

“But no, there is no one for me, not for some time. And I cannot send a man into battle that I would need by my side.”

It was a lonely life, that of a soldier. Surrounded by people, but their superior, and— Kyuhyun’s brain couldn’t even grasp the implications. Being a general, it was something maybe he didn’t have to be with Kyuhyun. Zhou Mi was authority, yes, but not officially in command of Kyuhyun. The sticks went back into the pile that was set to be burned, and Kyuhyun brushed bark from his hands.

“Perhaps we will try again, if ever there is time,” Zhou Mi said.

A man shouted, getting Zhou Mi’s attention, and Zhou Mi looked to Kyuhyun.

They nodded at each other, and Kyuhyun made his way back to his cell, tired, but with a mind that was not so easily put to rest. It only dawned upon him later, like a slow and creeping nausea, why Zhou Mi would be encouraging Kyuhyun to be able to defend himself.

Maybe if Zhou Mi knew a time was coming fast when Zhou Mi wouldn’t be there to defend him himself.

***


	5. Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for war, injuries, wounds, blood, background character death.

***

Kyuhyun heard distant shouts, as he lazed near his cell just out of the afternoon sun. Even if he was ordered back to it, he’d learned that if he stayed connected to it in some way, the guards were okay with it. He was in touching distance, at least, taking advantage of mildly cleaner grass and a different pattern of lumpy ground. It didn’t make him as claustrophobic, and he half expected to be ordered back into his cell with the bustling going on. The guards spoke to each other as a soldier rode by and shouted to them. They seemed angry, but not overly agitated or afraid. It wasn’t an attack on the camp, then, or Kyuhyun really would have been ordered back in.

But he watched, Zhou Mi’s tent hidden by some others but the path leading to it wasn’t. He hadn’t seen Zhou Mi leave, but he also hadn’t seen him throughout the day, either, so it was likely he was gone. The sound of hoofbeats had Kyuhyun rolling over so he could look in the other direction, and sitting up when he realized it was Zhou Mi’s horse. The edge of the pants he wore were bloody, and Kyuhyun stood. Zhou Mi did not pause, but his eyes met Kyuhyun’s briefly.

Kyuhyun glanced at the guards, and wasn’t called back as he made his way in Zhou Mi’s wake. Near the tent, Zhou Mi dismounted, a soldier taking his horse away after Zhou Mi gave it two pats to the neck. Kyuhyun wasn’t entirely sure if Zhou Mi knew he was there, but Zhou Mi sank down on the far side of his table, resting his forearms on the table, and sat there in silence as Kyuhyun knelt on the other side.

He half was afraid to ask.

“Something happened?”

“Yes. A scouting party, there were a dozen of them, slaughtered. Half as many wounded who were able to flee. I fear this. This escalation. This—“

The bottom of Zhou Mi’s fist hit hard on the wood, and Kyuhyun felt it shudder. Before Zhou Mi could repeat the action, Kyuhyun covered his hand with one of his own. He closed his eyes for a moment and wished he could draw out that frustration, that pain. But he didn’t know what else he could say that wasn’t trite or something that Zhou Mi already knew. They both knew that Zhou Mi hadn’t sent those men and boys out there intending them to die, but the risk had always been there.

“Did you gain anything by it?”

“Knowledge that they will attack mercilessly to scouting. But we had known that,” Zhou Mi said, hissing out a breath. “They had killed a single scout once, left him as warning. So we sent a bigger party, and they were able to return after some harassment from a lone soldier. This new group didn’t get nearly as far, but even staying to the high ground they were attacked. We’ve tried scouts at night, but because of the rocks, the hills, it is like throwing men one at a time over a tall cliff. Not one of them returned.”

“How many attackers were there?”

“Nearly as many, from what I hear.”

Kyuhyun nodded, thinking through the possibilities. “Then I would say, perhaps you’ve learned that they’ve moved their forces closer. To take on a party of almost two dozen, a party who was being careful and watching, they wouldn’t have kept so many men so close if the bulk of their army wasn’t closer as well. They’ve shown you their hand.”

“You think that they were keeping us away so that we didn’t see their army is moving in?”

“Why else attack so viciously, and with such different tactics? Either it was terrible luck, or…”

“We will double the patrols.” Zhou Mi shook his head. “Ah, I wish I could just change into an eagle and look out over everything. See exactly where their armies were, where their scouts were. We could end this.”

It was not a game of chess, not a video game that could be reset, but lives that were at stake. Lives that weighed heavily on Zhou Mi’s shoulders. His mind surely ached for the mental loss, and his body from burying the dead they had left to them. Zhou Mi’s silence had him searching for something to say, and he realized that Zhou Mi’s neck was angry, dark and red from the sun, and Kyuhyun pushed himself to his feet.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He left before Zhou Mi could protest, dragging the jar of the salve he’d used for his brand from his cell, and trotting back so that he could settle at Zhou Mi’s side.

“Here, let me,” Kyuhyun said, beginning to gently smear the salve on Zhou Mi’s skin.

“No, you shouldn’t. The men who were killed can’t feel like this,” Zhou Mi said, trying to move Kyuhyun away. As though that were an acceptable reason for him to remain in pain, like he deserved it as punishment somehow.

“Do you think they would want this for you?” Kyuhyun asked. “No. They would want you to be able to rest. To be able to sit with your council with a clear mind, and make sure their friends and brothers can go home safely.”

It made Zhou Mi sit still, anyway. If it helped to sooth a burn like Kyuhyun’s, he hoped it would help for a burn from the sun as well.

“You weren’t hurt elsewhere?”

“No, this isn’t my blood,” Zhou Mi said. “Thank you. You should go back now.”

Seeing the hurt still lurking in Zhou Mi’s eyes had him nodding, not arguing as he ducked back out and that time went fully into his cell. It was closed not long after, his dinner brought after that, and he thought hard with his head on his forearm. He didn’t know how to think, how to help, what to say. It made panic well for a moment before he realized, he couldn’t think like that. Zhou Mi wasn’t the only general, and they had fought many battles before his arrival, and after. If there was something he could do, he would do it. Until then, all he could do was wait.

***

It would not calm. To those Kyuhyun saw hurrying, he didn’t think they wanted it to. It had been tense, blood had been spilled, and Kyuhyun had been confined to his cell more often than not. There weren’t the resources to let him roam, and the thought it was getting closer to the end had him wondering again about his future. If Zhou Mi was killed, he would have to make his own way. If Zhou Mi lived, Kyuhyun didn’t know if Zhou Mi would let him follow him. Maybe it would have been wiser to find a way without prejudice, but Zhou Mi alone understood him, unless he could find a way to travel to find those who spoke an old version of his own language. Zhou Mi was his one spot of familiarity.

And the thought crept in, wondering if they would even let him live if Zhou Mi was killed.

But what was set in motion, did not stop. It was another battle, and another, and Kyuhyun watched as preparations were made, and soldiers were moved. His own guard dwindled to one, over all the prisoners, food sporadic, though water was plentiful. It was a small thing, but something he was grateful for when his stomach grumbled. And when his cell was opened, he scrambled out, following the pointed finger of a soldier. To where was obvious, as Zhou Mi did not have a helmet on, but he was in full armor, as he had been for several days. He was in a tight knot of soldiers, speaking to them as they nodded. He clasped one on the shoulder and turned, making his way directly to Kyuhyun, who waited at the edge of Zhou Mi’s tent.

“You won’t go back to the cell any more,” Zhou Mi said, after Kyuhyun had ducked inside after him.

At first, Kyuhyun thought he had misunderstood. “I won’t?”

“There aren’t enough hands right now to look after everything. This war will end, no matter which side wins, and there is no stopping it now,” Zhou Mi said. “You’ll stay here, in this tent. You’ll be able to get your own food, and water. If I don’t return, you’re the only one who knows of the verses. So it is up to you to see I am remembered.”

Kyuhyun wasn’t amused, even though he barked out a startled, awkward laugh and saw Zhou Mi’s lips twist in response. “History doesn’t record you dying here, so you have to come back.”

Zhou Mi ignored his declaration in favor of continuing to check his supplies, and check his sword belt.

“They may move the remainder of camp, so be prepared to go with them. Stay near the tent because you’ll need to move fast.”

If that happened, then the battle was not running in the favor of the general’s and Zhou Mi’s favor. There wasn’t enough time. He had so many questions! Zhou Mi’s childhood, Zhou Mi’s life. If Zhou MI felt he couldn’t love a soldier, then had he wanted to? Or maybe, Kyuhyun had just misunderstood. And he could see that Zhou Mi was tired already, and he was getting ready to leave, to go to a place he would almost surely see even less rest.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Kyuhyun asked.

“If you see something that needs done, do it. Those staying behind know you’ll be here, and are part of the camp. They may ask you help, so cooperate if you can. They won’t hurt you.”

Maybe Zhou Mi overestimated how people looked at him, but he didn’t know what Zhou Mi had told them, either. He was being upgraded to first class from a prison, more or less. He’d have been excited about it, aside from the fact that people were dying, and the man in front of him was going to join them.

He was a general. That was what he’d been trained for. That didn’t mean it was right. It had been some distant, exciting thing. It wasn’t exciting, and he wanted to tell Zhou Mi to stay. Zhou Mi, he wouldn’t laugh. Maybe, he’d be disappointed. Or maybe send Kyuhyun back to his cell. It was treason, for an army that wasn’t his.

But he wondered if it was written on his face, when Zhou Mi studied him so carefully, stepping closer and his voice pitched low.

“I wanted to thank you. I was tired. My parents are gone; the glory of battle has long faded. There have been…times I wondered if the war could ever be won, if the armies would just merge, and merge, until we would fight a fight against no one.” Zhou Mi shook his head. “There was a reason to fight.”

“It’s an important thing,” Kyuhyun said. And to be there, to wonder if it would ever end. There had to be a weariness to it, worried, knowing there were men relying on him. His foresight, telling Zhou Mi he’d be remembered, if that had helped, then he’d had a purpose, too.

But the hopeful moment lasted just that, a moment.

“You have water and food?” Kyuhyun asked, feeling nothing but dread as Zhou Mi picked up his pack.

“Yes, I have everything I need.”

His armor, his sword. A promise that his contribution to the world in word and action would be remembered.

“Come back alive.”

It was half demand, half request, said lightly almost as though it was a feeble joke.

“I always try,” Zhou Mi said.

But it wasn’t enough. They were looking at each other and it was like sending someone off to a day at work, something so utterly normal without any risk at all. And all he had were words? He should’ve been afraid, afraid of being cut down, of so many things. And yet, there were things that he was afraid of that seemed so much greater than that.

When he reached for Zhou Mi’s shoulder, when he stepped forward, Zhou Mi was there. The bump of mouth against mouth was too quick, almost too hard, and yet they both strained, desperate for it, before Kyuhyun nearly gasped away when the buzz became too much.

“Just come back,” Kyuhyun said again.

Zhou Mi didn’t answer him, not verbally anyway. The kiss he pressed against Kyuhyun’s lips was steady and slow, like he was savoring something, or maybe assuring Kyuhyun instead. And yet—

Kyuhyun swayed forward as Zhou Mi pulled away, but that was it. Zhou Mi met his eyes once and ducked out of the tent. He wanted to run after Zhou Mi, and it was ridiculous. He couldn’t go along. It wasn’t a scouting mission, and having someone to look after would just put Zhou Mi in danger. If determination could bring someone back alive, he was trying. Kyuhyun just had to put his trust in Zhou Mi, that history was right and that Zhou Mi and his army were victorious. Or that at least in the omission of Zhou Mi’s future after the battle, that Zhou Mi’s death in it hadn’t been skimmed away.

***

Waiting was a special kind of torture. Kyuhyun was in the lap of luxury, for a battle encampment, and he found it hard to stay still. Enjoying it felt almost disrespectful. It wasn’t as though they could hear the fighting, or even if there was fighting happening. That made it worse somehow, because sometimes when the men who remained were quiet, all that could be heard was the occasional bird and the sound of the stream. Basically, it sounded like a normal day, when it was anything but.

Zhou Mi had expressly told him not to go far from the tent, and Kyuhyun did listen. But he wandered down the rows of tents, edging past those who were preparing food, and talking. So many severe faces. A rider came and went, and Kyuhyun had never wanted more to know what was being said. Good or bad, at least he would have known.

Then the wagons came. Shouting, men and boys scurrying. There was blood, dripping from the wagon’s box like from a slaughter. Kyuhyun watched as one man was helped down, another. A third, was lifted and put aside.

He’d seen dead people. He’d been to funerals. But his chest, his throat went tight, his lungs constricting. He nearly turned, his mind retreating as much as his body wanted to. Back to the tent, back to pretending it was just some kind of vacation and that dozens, maybe hundreds of men weren’t being injured, dying. The dead man wasn’t Zhou Mi. None of them were and yet, he couldn’t know if he hid. He couldn’t know.

Heating water was all he could think to do. He thought to all the historical dramas he’d watched, and hot water was helpful. He wasn’t sure anyone knew about bacteria. The gross medicinal tea he’d been forced to drink, and the balm, obviously the healer was skilled, but even if all they did was make tea with it at least there was hot water.

No one stopped him. So that was something, he guessed. It wasn’t like he had a way to split the bigger wood, but he used what he could, making sure the fire didn’t get too low, and carrying buckets of water to the two big pots. Maybe they could use it for defense. Not that he was going to stick around if it came to that and maybe hope to splash someone. He’d be out with the rest of the army like Zhou Mi warned.

Zhou Mi was going to be back, though. Victorious. Smiling. Maybe he could tell Zhou Mi why he kissed him, or ask why Zhou Mi had wanted him to. Or maybe, they were just kisses shared of two men in a bad situation. It could have meant nothing. Maybe Kyuhyun was making the best of his traumatic time displacement, and maybe he’d fixated on Zhou Mi for that.

And maybe he was a blue goose, and was going to wake up in a sequin factory. He had no idea. He considered it, put it away. That was all he could do. Right then it didn’t matter.

The hot water, people came for it. No one thanked him, he didn’t think. But it wasn’t enough. When the water was topped off and warm, Kyuhyun steeled himself and filled a bucket with cool water, and found a bowl to make some sort of dip of. He started out at the fringes, peeking in tents and holding his breath as injured soldiers held out cups or bowls outside of them. Those men did thank him, and then he repeated the process over again with the warm water for the caregivers, over and over until his arm felt like the rubberiest rubber band. He wasn’t the only one helping. A boy no more than thirteen snagged him, giving him a bowl of broth, and he stared up at the darkening sky and wondered when he’d eaten last.

It gave him strength enough to make a couple more rounds. He never went in the tents with the moaning, standing with closed eyes as someone took the bucket and gave it back to him empty.

He fed the fire, filled the pots of water, and his stomach swooped when he saw he was being gestured to. Maybe it was Zhou Mi, maybe someone needed his help. He was pointed to a corner outside, near a fire so he could see. They put a pile of cloth in front of him, and showed him what to do. Bandages, he realized. Some of it was very nice cloth, some of it almost threadbare, but he ripped and tore, and ripped some more bandages out of the cloth. They were carried away, and more cloth was brought. Maybe they were saving limbs, or maybe healing burns, or cuts. He wasn't sure he needed to know. His fingers felt raw, his legs aching when he got up and handed over the last of the bandages. Others were dipping into the water, and Kyuhyun shuddered as he closed himself in Zhou Mi’s tent. He saw the dead, heard the wounded. 

Kyuhyun’s muscles were trembling as he curled onto his side, only getting half of the blanket over him before his arm dropped. He jerked awake several times, seeing Zhou Mi as one of the men.

“You promised,” he mumbled, sinking back into sleep.

***

There was more soup, after the sun rose, and more wagons. Kyuhyun realized he didn’t know how many more had come while he was sleeping, and it was the damn bucket that got him access, steeling himself as he went into tents and looked at every face in every pallet, every person who walked by, every soldier who sat to see if he saw Zhou Mi. He didn’t know if he hoped that he would find him, or that he wouldn’t. If he was on a bed, at least he was alive. But the wounds, they were horrible. The stench. No, he didn’t want Zhou Mi moaning and thrashing in pain.

The sun was almost directly overhead when he saw the first smile, watching as he shoved chunks of rice into his mouth and washed them down with water. The conversation was quick, and the reaction happy, but he didn’t know what it meant. Did they find more food? Had something good happened?

He lingered in the shadow of a tent as night fell, watching as people passed. No one looked at him in pity, and he saw so many faces. Grim, determined, smiling. He wanted to shout for them to tell him what they knew, and knew nothing he could do would get him his answers.

But it was the sound of horses that had him looking up after almost nodding off. Not just a single rider, but many. He stood, squinting in the low light. Five horses, ten. A wagon.

He saw a flash of red, and stood up on his toes. There! Yes, a second glimpse confirmed it, and Zhou Mi emerged from behind the wagon. It almost rocked him back, the relief. Zhou Mi’s helmet was gone. He was on a different horse, Kyuhyun realized after a moment. If that was someone else’s horse, then what had happened to the rider, he wondered. Or to Zhou Mi’s horse. Maybe they’d swapped, or someone had died. There were wet patches on the horse’s chest. Blood.

Zhou Mi saw him as he dismounted, and lifted a hand slightly to tell Kyuhyun to stay. He did, but he didn’t like it, crouching back down, watching. There in front of everyone, Zhou Mi shed his outer armor. The heavy armor slid to the ground, and Kyuhyun saw dark places, bloody places, on the shirt beneath it. Not large, at least, but Zhou Mi was making for the wagon as his horse was led away. Kyuhyun saw why. Men were being carried from the wagon, as they had been from others. But Zhou Mi was part of it, that time, carrying the wounded to any flat place. Filling new tents.

For a bit he thought better of waiting, darting into the tent and making the bedding ready so that Zhou Mi could rest. But when he came out, another wagon had rolled into camp. That one was emptied, too, as Kyuhyun almost vibrated in waiting.

No one was with Zhou Mi when he reappeared, and all Zhou Mi’s gait told him was that he was tired.

“Are you hurt?” Kyuhyun asked, before Zhou Mi could say anything. There was more blood on his clothes, but he didn’t think it was Zhou Mi’s, all over his hands and arms.

“Yes. No. My head hurts from not sleeping. Maybe other places, but it’s sleep I want most. I should…I should wash.”

His skin must have been going tacky with the blood. The water. Kyuhyun almost laughed in his ridiculous realization that he’d kept the water warm for Zhou Mi.

“I’ll be right back, just wait behind the tent,” Kyuhyun said. He had two buckets, one of cold, one with heated water from the fire. Mixed, it was warm but not hot and Zhou Mi stripped off his clothing, washing what he could from his skin as Kyuhyun poured slowly. Zhou Mi’s hands were shaking

“The blankets are ready for you,” Kyuhyun said. Zhou Mi was there, in the tent again. Not just a figment of his imagination, but real, relieving himself even as the set of his shoulders spoke of exhaustion. “Is it…over?”

Zhou Mi nodded as he turned back around. “Yes, it’s over. But there is still much to do.”

He was like an old man, lowering himself to the ground, and he did not protest as Kyuhyun covered him. Of course, then Kyuhyun realized his problem. That was where he had slept. Of course, there was his cell, but Zhou Mi had already told him he wouldn’t be going back to that. With the second blanket, he could at least curl up in a corner, much as he had during the lightning storm. He had questions, and it wasn’t the time.

“It’s won, you can sleep now,” Kyuhyun said. He started to gather his own blanket, so that he could move.

“Stay,” Zhou Mi said, one of his hands reaching out from under the blanket. Kyuhyun realized how hoarse Zhou Mi sounded, and he stretched out and tugged his blanket up over himself.

For a moment he stared at Zhou Mi’s hand, and he covered it, grasping it even though his own skin felt raw. It shook, Zhou Mi’s skin warm, and his fingers clasping loosely back.

He woke when Zhou Mi jerked awake, an unintelligible shout in his throat.

“It’s all right,” Kyuhyun said. Their hands had slid away as they slept, and he touched Zhou Mi’s arm.

When Zhou Mi woke again, he got up.

“Stay there, I have to check on the men,” Zhou Mi told him.

He heard the rustle as Zhou Mi dressed, and stared at the empty space beside him as he strained to hear noises from beyond the tent. It was only fidgeting that kept him awake, and he felt the groan with his soul when Zhou Mi returned and rested again next to him. It was Zhou Mi’s hand against his arm that time, not as shaky as it had been, but it was comfort just the same. He wavered to the sound of Zhou Mi’s breathing, and dreamed of blood welling over the buckets he carried, like a flood.

***

The days were some of the longest of Kyuhyun’s life. The sun woke Zhou Mi, and Zhou Mi woke him, and they worked. Food was eaten on the go, and Kyuhyun was not left out. He was given his instructions by Zhou Mi, or by gestures from the others. Always with others, they gathered wood, stoked fires, carried water. They carried away pots of waste, sullied clothes, bloody blankets. Some of it was washed to be used again, and some of it was burned.

Kyuhyun staggered out of one tent to vomit, the scent of infection, of defecation, so strong that it overwhelmed him. And he picked up his bucket of water and steeled himself and went right back in. Water was not a choice, it was a necessity. He staggered back out with a pile of cloth and flies streaming behind him.

When he slept, it was because he couldn’t stay upright, the sun long set and eyes bleary in the light of the fires. Men were waking to replace them, and Zhou Mi caught his elbow, and they walked together. Or limped, he didn’t know which. He was too wound up, lying stiff beneath the blanket after he’d tossed away his stinking clothes and washed as much as he could from his skin. It hurt, and he almost whimpered as his body began to relax.

Because he wanted to reach for Zhou Mi, he turned on his side, breathing carefully.

Zhou Mi’s chest was a searing heat against his back, and Zhou Mi enfolded him, his breath warm against the back of his neck. He relaxed, because he had no choice, or else Zhou Mi would not sleep either.

“There were times I thought I could not make it, when I saw men fall. My horse died with them,” Zhou Mi said. “I told you I would try. I remembered. Is it true, you have no sorcery?”

The soft words, he wondered that Zhou Mi didn’t know. He was just a man, too. But then, there were so many things he didn’t have answers for.

“I don’t have any powers. I just wanted you safe.”

Just safe. And Zhou Mi nodding, relaxing with him.

And the dawn woke them to start over again.

Zhou Mi was everywhere, nowhere, showing up at his elbow, helping to carry away litters burdened with the dead. He’d seen so many bodies, and he wondered how many more that Zhou Mi had seen.

“If they rinse off their hands with hot water,” Kyuhyun suggested, breathing carefully. “Or even cold water.”

He watched men going from injured to injured, and wiping their hands clean. Some washed, others didn’t. Men moaned, some injured, others dying. Some would live if they had luck, and others only waited for death. But there wasn’t enough hot water, not for the whole camp. Zhou Mi said a few words about it, and that was all it was. A suggestion, if it could be followed. Blood, and waste, and the gathering of herbs.

Even the sight of an animal carcass being chopped up for the next meal almost made his stomach turn, veering off and breathing carefully with his hands on his knees. It was chaos, organized chaos, men with no training turned into healers, doing their best to save their friends as the healers themselves picked and chose who to treat. It was a deadly triage, and day by day, the camp grew quieter.

“Men are leaving,” Zhou Mi said, when Kyuhyun mentioned it. It was not all because of the dead. “The war is ended. Their families wait. Day by day, we’ll see the numbers reduced. Some leave with the wounded, wagons full of those who can travel. Some who can’t but who cannot stay.”

Zhou Mi wasn’t going to stop them, was what he was saying. It wasn’t as though risks were being taken. There was another portion of men who were ensuring the retreat stayed just that, but it was out of Zhou Mi’s hands. They were in the mode of recovery, not of fighting. And recovery meant the tents could come down, and the dead would be left to rest.

Zhou Mi brought a salve with him that night, and Kyuhyun’s hands almost cried with relief, near to cracking from the carrying, and washing. It was sticky as they rested, his fingers stroking against the calluses on Zhou Mi’s palm. 

Kyuhyun’s head tilted, when he realized Zhou Mi was moving closer, taking in a long breath. When Zhou Mi pressed his lips against Kyuhyun’s, a shudder stroked down his spine. It was slow, a kiss that almost refused to end as his nose pressed against Zhou Mi’s cheek.

“Thank you,” Zhou Mi murmured. “I would not have— Thank you.”

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what Zhou Mi was thanking him for or if it was just that, appreciation.

“Thank you,” Kyuhyun said in return. For returning, for showing him that the kiss had not been some desperation before battle. For being there. For holding his hand as he slept.

***

There was a lull, enough for Kyuhyun to wash his own clothes, and eat for all the meals he’d had too little of or had forgotten. His stomach grumbled, and he sipped tea as he sat swathed in a blanket and drowsing while using Zhou Mi’s desk as a pillow. Zhou Mi had left, but that was no surprise either. He’d taken his food with him, leaving with a stroke against Kyuhyun’s hair that had had him reaching up to touch. What that meant, he didn’t know.

Afternoon had come, and Kyuhyun had dressed, and helped with the fires, by the time Zhou Mi returned to the tent. He took the tea that Kyuhyun offered, and tugged Kyuhyun down beside him, leaning against him, pulling Kyuhyun into him as well.

“More are leaving,” Zhou Mi said. “We won’t leave the dying, but there are few that will last the day. Most will leave, not tomorrow, but maybe the next.”

“What will you do?” Kyuhyun asked. The cloth had fallen open, and the skin of Zhou Mi’s chest was warm, comforting as he stroked against it, fingers skimming the pendant that Zhou Mi wore. A crest, of some kind. It was a luxury, and his hand stayed when Zhou Mi made no indication of discomfort. Even with the rough skin of Kyuhyun’s fingers, he didn’t protest.

“I’m not sure. When the bulk of camp breaks up, I will leave with them,” Zhou Mi said.

It made sense. He would be able to help coordinate those who were leaving, maybe. He wondered if all of them knew how they could get home.

And he wasn’t quite sure why he hesitated so long before asking, “And me?”

“I promised you when the war was over that you were free,” Zhou Mi said.

“As long as you couldn’t prove I did anything bad,” Kyuhyun put in helpfully.

“That also. And it would be difficult for you to go without knowing how to speak the language. If you did not mind the direction, I can acquire a horse for you. I might need someone who can make bricks.”

Kyuhyun could hear the smile in Zhou Mi’s voice well before he snorted. He moved, minutely, pressing his face against Zhou Mi’s neck.

“I won’t mind which direction,” Kyuhyun told him.

The way that Zhou Mi squeezed his side and stroked firmly for several moments spoke so much of relief, or maybe happiness, that Kyuhyun relaxed. It was one question that no longer had to weigh on his mind, and maybe no longer on Zhou Mi’s mind as well. And there were other secrets under the skin of a man who was wounded in more than physical ways. Neither of them were perfect. Maybe he could soothe Zhou Mi’s nightmares, a little. He couldn’t just let Zhou Mi take care of him. But it was a way forward.

Zhou Mi laughed a little, when Kyuhyun stole back the tea. But he made sure there was some left when he gave it back. There weren’t any words, just leaning together. And that was enough.

***

Zhou Mi felt like he had been cored out, empty, and too aware, and off balance. The tent was his solace, walls that hid him from what was outside, from within and without. A shield, an escape. He wanted to leave, and could not. He owed a debt, and at times the verse that Kuixian had remembered came flooding back to him. Yes, he wanted to be those birds. He wanted to fly away, to take himself to the mountain, to lie still and not think and hope that it did not bring images of war to him. He could have been still, but Kuixian was there. He didn’t think that Kuixian would have questioned him, and maybe even joined him. But if he stopped, he wasn’t sure he would move again. He was still trying to find himself, and Kuixian was keeping him at least the smallest bit steady while he got through what he needed to.

It was a perplexing thought that he didn’t know if he’d seen Kuixian happy. Explaining about the strange items in his bag, maybe, or in the dream at Kuixian’s city. Though Kuixian there, stretched out on his back after eating and just relaxing, it was as close as he had seen recently. Kuixian had grown thinner. It had not been for lack of food, because for all of the troubles they’d had, food had not been among them. No, Kuixian had missed meals, helping. He’d heard tales of the “stranger” as they called Kuixian, staggering around the camp with buckets of water, making sure the injured had something to drink, and the healers water to wash with. He’d asked Kuixian to help, and he had. It was perhaps the truest thing Kuixian had done for him since he’d arrived. He could have stayed in the tent, and never left. And yet, it felt as though he had done what he had for Zhou Mi. Maybe it was conceit, and maybe the plight of the injured had moved him.

He’d never forget looking to his tent and seeing Kuixian standing there, staring in shock as Zhou Mi returned. Maybe that had been happiness. Relief. He knew it had been for him, and he’d wanted Kuixian in that moment to tell him it was okay, that it had been supposed to happen that way. But he’d had reality, injured men who needed him, and dead to be tended to. It was not about him, in that moment. There were men that had died because of his sword, and those who had died because of his orders. It was over, and maybe would never be over, as he relived shouting his men forward.

But Kuixian had stayed beside him, worked, slept, ate. Familiar, encouraging, non-judgmental. Kuixian hadn’t seen all that had happened, didn’t know except for the aftermath, and in so many ways he wanted it to stay that way. In some way, he was glad that the men were leaving, and it shamed him. Fewer to look to him, to blame him for the friends they had lost. He’d been shouted at by a soldier, and he’d ordered no one to be beaten. It was over, and that was most important. Being busy had been something that had saved him from breaking, focusing on others, putting off feelings. They were things he could shout, or cry, or make himself sick over.

Instead, he picked up his brush, and pulled out his paper. He stilled his mind as best he could, exhaling, letting images form, letting words come to him. At first, it was chaos, that molded together, and began to be familiar. Ink smoothed onto the paper, words forming, thoughts expression his horror in the blood, in being covered in it. Men he had known dying, his horse. The weight of all those things was so heavy, and he shed them putting them down, until he realized he was breathing heavily, his brush strokes uneven and thick.

Zhou Mi shook his head, forcing himself to write the last ones again, smoothing wetness from his cheeks. He couldn’t let his discipline falter, and it was set aside to dry. A sound had him looking up, and his lips tugged at the corners. Kuixian was waking, making little noises like a puppy and it gave him a thought. A man who’d waited, who’d believed in him. Maybe not because of himself, maybe only because he thought there was proof, but he’d kept that belief even after he had met Zhou Mi. Kuixian had asked him how he had come to be there, and it was because of his family. If he’d been lackluster, he would have been put to the back lines, he supposed. His father hadn’t allowed that.

“What are you doing?” Kuixian asked, having rolled on his side toward Zhou Mi but still lying down.

“Writing down some thoughts,” Zhou Mi said.

“Oh? What about?”

“The war, and about other things.”

Kuixian looked like he belonged there, stretching and sitting up. It was something else he would have to write down, but maybe not when Kuixian was watching him. Had Kuixian read the verses he had just written? Some of those verses maybe that Kuixian didn’t know were about himself. Before he had left, there had been so many confused thoughts about Kuixian’s role in the war, about what Kuixian made him feel about himself. Kuixian had made him promise to return, and it hadn’t been as a general.

He hadn’t kissed Kuixian as a soldier. And there were words of that, of that surprise, of that charge he’d felt go through him as he’d ridden away, the determination, that it would take many more pages to fill. What it meant for the future, he didn’t know if Kuixian knew either. And Zhou Mi smiled as Kuixian stared at one of the papers without touching it, as though he could somehow read it, even though Zhou Mi knew he couldn’t.

“Can I get my bag?” Kuixian asked.

There was no reason not to, and Zhou Mi pulled it from his chest, handing it across his table to where Kuixian reached. Kuixian was only half dressed, and it had him staring down at the table for a moment before watching to see what Kuixian had wanted. Out from the bag, he pulled the little black box he called phone, and it chimed as Kuixian did inexplicable things to it.

“Don’t pay attention to me, just write,” Kuixian said.

No, not strange at all. Zhou Mi looked down at the very least, twisting his brush until Kuixian made a sound of accomplishment.

“There. Writer at work,” Kuixian said. He held out the phone, and showed Zhou Mi his handiwork. The image that Kuixian showed him was of him at his table, pondering the paper in front of him. It looked so real, as though he were looking somehow himself.

“People would call this faker than fake if it ever got into the future,” Kuixian mused. “But if people knew it was real?”

Kuixian blew out a breath as though it would be something unbelievable. That felt just that way to him as well, Kuixian’s insistence he was famous, and Zhou Mi stacked up his new writing, tucking them away.

“If you want to dress, we’ll go look to see if anything needs to be done.”

Kuixian didn’t pause, getting to his feet and reaching for his clothes. Zhou Mi readied himself as well. Moving reminded him of all the reasons he had to keep going. What was a general without a war?

***

Zhou Mi kept the best secrets, and was also terrible at keeping them at all. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Sure, maybe he’d been cagey about what he’d been writing, sometimes putting out paper int he middle of the day or writing by candlelight late the night before. But Kyuhyun knew beyond a doubt that Zhou Mi had a secret, from the way that Zhou Mi had been smirking at him, and making sure to talk to people out of earshot, or making excuses for Kyuhyun to stay in the tent.

But the culmination of that was Zhou Mi riding up with a horse in tow and a wagon of soldiers behind that.

“We’re taking a ride,” Zhou Mi said.

They found a place Kyuhyun could mount from, and they rode away from the oppression of the tents, the injured, the milling soldiers who wandered without aim. He wasn’t surrounded by men, just Zhou Mi and a lumbering wagon. It almost made him want to kick into a gallop and ride until his horse wanted to stop, but he stayed at Zhou Mi’s side, letting Zhou Mi point out various places, or speak of how preparations to move the bulk of camp were going, or how well the injured were healing.

Most of them. Two more were buried that morning, but he knew Zhou Mi would not speak of it until they were alone, and until there was time to deal with it in private. What Zhou Mi would speak of at all. If Zhou Mi needed to, he figured he would eventually, and it wasn’t as though Kyuhyun was gong anywhere. He had his own worries that he figured one day he’d lay on Zhou Mi’s shoulders too, but some of those he figured would be answered after the camp dispersed and Zhou Mi decided the direction they would go in. Life answers by doing.

Kyuhyun watched the trees out of habit, like some remnant soldiers were going to come swooping in, and he was startled when Zhou Mi pulled his horse to a halt.

“This is where we stop,” Zhou Mi said, swinging down from his horse.

“Okay,” Kyuhyun said, extending that word and dismounting as well. “You’ve been so secretive. What’s going on?”

“Do you recognize this place?”

“I don’t…?” Though Zhou Mi kept looking at him so intently it was obvious that he should, so he kept looking, and it dawned on him. “Is this where I…?”

Faceplanted into a battle from the future. Yes, his dream goals.

Zhou Mi nodded. “It is. And it’s here where we build the shrine.”

Oh. Oh, goosebumps broke over his skin, and he scrubbed at one of his arms.

“We salvaged lumber from temporary shelters that were assembled. And someone helpfully made us bricks for a foundation,” Zhou Mi said. The soldiers gathered near enough laughed, and Kyuhyun flushed. Zhou Mi had spoken of it, since their little dream trip into the future. The foundation of something, going forward.

“Where do we build?” Zhou Mi asked.

He had five pairs of eyes staring at him. Which, that wasn’t in the least bit full of pressure. But trees looked a hell of a lot similar in a place he’d only seen in a pot of adrenaline.

It was larger than he remembered. He remembered this tight little knot of trees, and it was actually quite a spacious meadow. There were still areas where the battle could be seen, places the earth had been torn into, but there were no more traces of blood. Where had he fallen? Gawking around wasn’t exactly helping. He walked around with his eyes closed to see if he could ping some kind of emotional response, and all that got him was stubbing his shoe on a tree root. It was nearish the tree line. Which tree had Zhou Mi hauled him to, anyway?

“I don’t know,” Kyuhyun said. “And I don’t know if it matters, really. Here’s a good enough place. It’s flat here.”

Zhou Mi considered it, probably drawing on his own memory as well.

“We’ll build here, then.”

There was a lot of conversation that went on that Kyuhyun wasn’t privy to, between the soldiers. The bricks were carried over, but not before the earth was flattened and a shape made. It seemed strange, to see it being laid, to see them mixing more clay and water into mortar, resting dry grass along it and stacking brick after brick. It wasn’t tall, the foundation, maybe six inches altogether, but it gave them a base on which to build. Zhou Mi helped, and Kyuhyun eased around the edges, mostly trying to stay out of the way and petting the horses. Construction wasn’t really his deal, and it wasn’t like they had a bunch of nails, or a screwdriver.

Kyuhyun scouted the bushes for berries, thinking maybe at least that’d help.

“Will I die if I eat this?” Kyuhyun asked, holding out a handful of berries.

Zhou Mi eyed them for a moment. “No. But you may wish you were when your bowels—“

“Okay, okay,” Kyuhyun said, throwing them all back toward the trees. And his voice lowered, even though the soldiers couldn’t exactly understand him. “What do they think of this?”

“It’s a idea I hope we would have had, even without this,” Zhou Mi said. “It is…a kind of peace.”

Closure, he supposed, in a way. Like going to a grave. A ritual.

And it turned out that Kyuhyun did have a use, holding wood upright as it was fastened. Zhou Mi sent a smirk his way as Kyuhyun felt he was turning into a statue, but with that done, it almost started looking like it was going to be a shrine and not just a collection of wood and some bricks. 

And even with his industriously help, it still took several hours, a midday snack, and Kyuhyun turning down a kind offer to be hoisted up to thatch the roof. But it was there, a squat, open little building just tall enough for a man to stand, and big enough inside for the memories they had brought to place in it.

On a peg within, Zhou Mi hung a flat piece of wood with carving that was rudimentary but well done. It was not the sign of the modern shrine, and Kyuhyun looked to Zhou Mi.

“What does it say?”

“We remember the lost of thirteen armies,” Zhou Mi said.

The soldiers carved their names into the wood, and he spied Zhou Mi’s name among them. It was a solid little building. It would stand. Maybe not forever, but it would stand.

It was quiet, on the way back to the camp. It was diminishing, less smoke in the air, less voices.

“Tomorrow we load the wagons,” Zhou Mi said, and the smile on his face was infinite. The shrine was built. The battles were done, and the place they had fought would be abandoned.

***

Sleep was supposed to be an easy escape, Kuixian’s deep and even breaths beside him. He saw blood when he closed his eyes, felt the screams with his fingertips. And when he wanted to leap up and run, he clutched tight to the shirt Kuixian wore, and tried to focus on little things. Kuixian was warm, and he was alive, and sometimes he remembered Kuixian’s screams of pain as well. He hadn’t been able to save Kuixian from that, but he had been able to rescue him from more. That was one thing he could allow himself. The battle had brought Kuixian pain. He might have been a good general himself, taking in his people, thinking ahead to what must be.

But he didn’t want that, not for Kuixian. The little laugh, the way he almost shook with it, he would see that away from bloodshed. They would keep horses. They would find a place, a home. The secrets, Kuixian would teach him, with his stories of strange lands. A life could be whiled away like that.

All he wanted was rest, and to find his purpose. And what purpose he could have, away from all he’d ever know? It worried through him, as he breathed.

__

_The river was wide, wider than any Zhou Mi had seen or crossed, and out over it, lights sparkled. It was a strange reflection as he stood on the sandy banks, of tents, and men, and mountains. But from the other side, reaching toward them, there was a city. No, not a city of his own time, but a city like Kuixian’s. Tall buildings, stretching over the water, and glowing from within, more, and more. It was like looking at the tide of two worlds meeting, tent against stone, past against the future, all on the ripples of the water._

_“It’s beautiful,” Kuixian said, and the splash of the water was loud as he began to wade in, for a moment obliterating the images of the tents._

_“Be careful!” Zhou Mi said, and the water rose cold against his own legs, up past his knees as he waded just behind Kuixian. He reached out, the water cool against his fingers as he tried to touch those sparkling lights. They looked like stars on the water though the clouds above them were dark and unrelieved. Dark, like Kuixian’s eyes and the softness there. “Don’t go far.”_

_But Kuixian got only further, beginning to float, swimming, kicking, like he was falling down into that big trench between high walls, to a shore too far away to see._

_“Stop,” Zhou Mi said, and it came out of him stumbling and harsh. “Stop! If you don’t—“_

_He couldn’t get there. The further that Kuixian went, he couldn’t reach. There was no way to make it across, to stretch and protect. He had no boat to carry him, or even to see, air catching in his throat as he waded forward and lost Kuixian to the gray for a moment._

_“Can’t you swim?” Kuixian asked._

_“I can! But I—“_

_Zhou Mi looked back at the tents, the faces of the dead, his parents. He waded several feet further, his hands illuminated by the lights in the water and his eyes on Kuixian. The current pulled at him, tugging at his clothes, and still he walked forward, reaching for Kuixian’s hands. He lunged forward, trying to kick and swim, and fought, his legs like rocks, his arms sold and heavy, pulling him down. So he walked, until the water was at his throat, at his jaw, his lips._

_His eyes closed as the water swirled up over his hair, one last gasp, and he reached, and he reached._

Zhou Mi jerked awake, rolling, his body half over Kuixian’s before he heard what was being shouted from the soldier in the tent’s entry.

“A light, out of the forest! General, come and see.”

Kuixian grunted as Zhou Mi moved off of him, and accepted the hand Zhou Mi offered to help him stand.

“There’s something they want me to see,” Zhou Mi explained, and they went outside together.

The land around them was lit, truly, though not as if it were day. Into the sky, a beacon glowing high and bright all the way to the clouds. It was as though it was welcoming something going up, or maybe coming down.

“Where is it coming from?”

The question was high, excited, afraid, and the consensus was to follow it.

“What is it?” Zhou Mi murmured. “Do you know what it is?”

“I don’t know. I just— This is stupid, but—“ Kuixian’s face was half lit in shadows as he looked at him. “What if it’s the shrine? What if…?”

Kuixian couldn’t even finish his sentence, frowning like he maybe didn’t want to say, but Zhou Mi understood him. It was no less unbelievable than Kuixian arriving, and there had been light when that had happened, too.

“Do you think it’s calling you back?” Of all the things he considered, it was not that Kuixian’s purpose there was finished. Sickness twined in his gut, hardening, congealing.

“I don’t know,” Kuixian said.

Zhou Mi nodded once, and did not let the fear consume him. “Let’s find out.”

***

They left shortly after, after Kyuhyun had retrieved the bag he had taken with him. Nothing could stay behind, if it really was a way back. Kyuhyun watched as Zhou Mi spoke to a few soldiers, their heads shaking as Zhou Mi gave some kind of instruction. Kyuhyun wanted to run, when Zhou Mi began to lead him toward the light. If they got to the shrine, and it really was sending up some kind of time-traveling bat signal, then Kyuhyun wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Throw himself through? It wasn’t like he had a lot of experience with the whole time travel thing. But the future! He would have ramen. Ice cream. And the thought of going home made him weak in his knees. His family.

All they could do was follow the light, and Zhou Mi had to steady him several times over the path as he tripped. It was the only reason his mind wasn’t racing on ahead, having Zhou Mi there. Questions poured out of him, how it could have happened, what it meant, how it couldn’t be real, or make sense. Maybe it was a trap.

“That is nothing like I have seen,” Zhou Mi told him.

He wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. The closer they got, the brighter it was, until they got to the edge of the clearing. The shrine was there, in the middle, its edges fuzzy in the brightness and Kyuhyun found it hard to look, and hard to look away as well.

“Kuixian,” Zhou Mi said, and he startled. The ringing in his ears cleared, and he wasn’t there alone. Zhou Mi was there, in his simple clothes, his hair bound up. He looked utterly right there, and his features were in such harsh relief in the light.

The light was a promise, his future, his own time.

“Do you think it will take you back?” Zhou Mi asked.

“Or maybe obliterate me,” Kyuhyun said. But his eyes weren’t on the light, but on Zhou Mi. If he left, Zhou Mi would still be there. He had all the tools to be successful. He’d won the war! And yet, he’d be alone. And some of the joy dimmed as he realized the choices in front of him. Once, he’d asked Zhou Mi what plans Zhou Mi had for Kyuhyun’s future. He asked so many questions when he said, “What about you?”

Zhou Mi exhaled slowly, looking to the light, to the bag Kyuhyun held, and meeting Kyuhyun’s eyes again. “Perhaps, it will depend on you. I told the men that if I did not return by dawn that they should leave without me.”

Kyuhyun tilted his head, his mouth dropping open. “What?”

“I have never felt like I belonged in this place,” Zhou Mi explained, gesturing hard behind him. “In this…time. My parents, my grandparents, they are all gone. My cousins will not miss me. What does your history say became of me after this war?”

“We know nothing about you. The war ended, and there were no records.”

Zhou Mi nodded slowly.

“As though I vanished,” Zhou Mi said. “Or left.”

Kyuhyun could hardly grasp it. “Are you saying— You think it’s always been this way?”

“The poems you know, the things that I felt, that I wrote to test you, you knew them from your future. Maybe my future isn’t one that dies out before you are born, but continues after.”

“But if you go, if you even can go, you might not be able to return?”

He wanted to laugh, such ridiculous warnings coming out of his mouth, things he had never thought of before just that moment. Had he thought it, dreamed it? Of course, being able to do more than show Zhou Mi just a few things in a dream. Dreams, they were surreal, hard to interact with. The life Zhou Mi led was not less, but there was so much more. So much that had changed. It wasn’t that Zhou Mi was more worthy to go with him than any of the other men. He was just a man. A man Kyuhyun could—

“There are no dangers I fear,” Zhou Mi said. “Maybe it’s folly. Will there be twelve armies waiting for us?”

“No,” Kyuhyun laughed. “Though there may be twelve rounds of bureaucracy. We’d be able to figure out something, though.”

Even if he had to empty out his savings, they’d figure it out.

“I want you to go with me,” Kyuhyun said. He’d have wanted to hear the words, not just some acceptance of it.

When Kyuhyun held out his hand, Zhou Mi took it. He squeezed, and Zhou Mi squeezed back. Don’t let go, he said without words. He didn’t know if it’d make any difference. He didn’t know anything. They walked toward the shrine together, the light no less, no greater. There was no heat, or cold. It just was, and Kyuhyun stared into it, dazzled, as though it was just another dream. The tiny building, so newly built, just waiting for them.

“What if it doesn’t work?” Kyuhyun asked, freezing before they could step inside. “What if—“

Zhou Mi, the realist, smiled.

“Then I’ll remember you, all of this. I’ll travel and live,” Zhou Mi said. “I won’t forget you.”

But parted by hundreds of years. That scared Kyuhyun, more than worrying about how they’d make it in the future did. But he didn’t belong in Zhou Mi’s time, and the shrine had proved it. He had to go. He couldn’t just change his mind and walk away. And though his words were assuring, Zhou Mi’s eyes were wide in the light, and he could see his own thoughts reflected there. Maybe his own fear.

“I won’t forget you, either,” Kyuhyun swore. “But I won’t have to.”

He said it so firmly, and when he pulled Zhou Mi close, his eyes stung as Zhou Mi kissed him. It was a goodbye kiss, a just-in-case kiss. A promise. His throat ached and he held Zhou Mi’s hand so tightly.

No matter what, they would move forward. No matter whose time they ended up in, whether the shrine left them, or took them back to Kyuhyun’s time. It just had to be both of them, no matter what. 

There wasn’t time for what-ifs, or worry then. They stepped in, both of them taking the first step together, and then the next. It was small, smaller than it had been over time, and they stood there, close, the light enfolding. It felt warm at last, and their hands were slick and trembling as they waited.

Kyuhyun breathed in as Zhou Mi exhaled. He pictured the shrine as it was, the hint of smog, the words of Zhou Mi’s so elegantly written. His skin began to prickle, hair standing up along his skin, and he opened his mouth and spoke silence into the light. He couldn’t feel, couldn’t see anything but light. He was light, and he closed his eyes so tightly they hurt.

He was standing, vertigo vicious and swinging him forward, breathing harsh in his ears, swaying into Zhou Mi’s chest and inhaling once, sharply. Zhou Mi’s hands came up, gripping his shoulders until Kyuhyun dared to peer through his lashes.

“Are we—“

It was the sound of a car horn that had him sputtering, laughing, his knees nearly giving out as he clung to Zhou Mi’s clothes and hardly believed.

He smiled up at Zhou Mi’s shocked face, as he took in the modern shrine, and the bright sun outside of the plastic barrier. They were home.

***


End file.
